New entropy

Source: new entropy (ID: Baoliao Hui)

Original title: applets break through the Berlin Wall

On March 15, a source said that Alibaba plans to open a special Taobao app on Tencent wechat, and the app will support wechat payment after it goes online. This is not the first time that the wechat app of Taobao special price version has settled in Tencent's traffic system.

Now it seems that this judgment is becoming a reality. On March 17, according to a number of media interviews, such as the news agency, the interface, etc., the customer service of Taobao special edition said that there were wechat applets, but they were still in the process of optimization. They didn't know the specific situation and online time and other relevant details, and the specific implementation plan needs to be paid attention to later.

But now this situation is undergoing subtle changes. The new social e-commerce platform based on wechat traffic is catching up with the number of users of Alibaba e-commerce.

Domestic and foreign troubles of Alibaba e-commerce

In Alibaba's core e-commerce business, since pinduoduo's listing in 2018, Alibaba's Taobao has faced threats from a new e-commerce platform based on wechat social traffic and in the form of small programs.

According to the financial report data of the three e-commerce giants in the last two periods, in terms of user activity, one of the most concerned indicators of e-commerce platform in the capital market, Ali's net user growth has met an obvious ceiling. In the third quarter, the number of annual active users of pinduoduo, Jingdong and Ali increased by 48.1 million, 24.2 million and 15 million respectively.

Since reaching 710 million users in Q4 in 2019, Alibaba has been climbing slowly on the 700 million user base for four consecutive quarters. Pinduoduo will surpass 680 million users in Q2 in 2020 and reach 730 million users in Q3 in 2020; Jingdong will also rush from 380 million users in Q1 in 2020 to 440 million users in Q3.

In the first three quarters of 2020, pinduoduo added 33.37 million more users than Ali in each quarter on average. At the end of the third quarter, the gap between pinduoduo and Ali was 25.7 million. According to this speed, pinduoduo's annual number of active users in the fourth quarter can surpass Ali.

With the release of financial reports in the fourth quarter of 2020, this speed has become a reality. According to the latest Q4 financial report of pinduoduo, the number of active buyers of pinduoduo in 2020 is 788.4 million, while that of Ali is 779 million, which means that pinduoduo has surpassed Ali to become the largest e-commerce platform in China.

Whether pinduoduo was listed from the siege of Alibaba and other e-commerce giants in 2018, or now surpasses Alibaba, the small program based on wechat ecological traffic is pinduoduo's biggest traffic power so far.

Chen Lei, the current CEO of pinduoduo, also explained why pinduoduo had bet on wechat apps at the beginning in 2018. In his opinion, although the small programs at that time generally remained poor, if the process details were optimized, the small programs could also form self blood and flow backflow.

After that, he redesigned the small program sharing card to increase the reading rate by 50%. For small programs, the official account, message push and circle of friends shared three actions to optimize the linkage, and the retention rate was increased by 30%; and the introduction of the vertical payment reduced the user's share of social motivation. The small program service number reminded that the user could wake up the user effectively for two times.

As the CTO of pinduoduo at that time, Chen Lei helped pinduoduo complete the original accumulation of users in the early stage through a series of small program optimization strategies in the wechat ecosystem. Jingdong also benefited from the small program traffic of wechat.

In 2020, the Q4 financial report of Jingdong showed a net increase of 30 million active sellers, creating the highest increase since its listing. In the past 12 months, the number of active buyers reached 472 million, an increase of 30.4% over the same period last year. The annual net increase was nearly 110 million active buyers, of which 80% of new growth users came from emerging markets.

Not only do new users run fast, but the cost of pinduoduo and Jingdong 200 is also significantly lower than that of Ali's nearly 1000 yuan. Although the new users obtained by pinduoduo and Jingdong relying on their own wechat apps are far less than Alibaba's e-commerce in terms of overall customer price and profitability, the number of new users constantly catching up with or even surpassing Alibaba can not be ignored.

In the case of e-commerce's home users' failure to attract new customers, Ali does not have many opportunities to import external traffic.

Kwai tiktok, the two largest traffic platform, is now in the market. Thanks to the live broadcast business bonus, the two are interested in building a closed loop of e-commerce based on short video content platform traffic.

Tiktok issued the "new rules for beauty protection" in July 30, 2020. The regulations of August 6th, the third party platform's beauty sharing live broadcast sharing needs to match the live broadcast with the master's platform, and the products of the shop platform will not be affected.

Tiktok started to differentiate from service fees in August 20, 2020, and the service charge for the third party tiktok platform was 20%, while the chattering store only received 5%. In October 9th tiktok shut down the third party tiktok directly into the channel of live broadcasting, and the self operated electric business was basically formed since then.

Kwai has also suspended the Taobao chain in late 2019. Although it has been restored, the shadow of the self built e-commerce transaction and the game of Ali business has emerged.

In order to deal with the traffic anxiety of pulling new, Alibaba launched the special price version of Taobao in March 2020. According to the financial report, it will exceed 100 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, with an average monthly growth of nearly 30 million. Although it seems to be growing, combined with Alibaba's overall monthly growth of nearly 21 million, Taobao special edition is more like Alibaba's internal ecological flow.

Ali's desire for external fresh traffic input is also the main reason indirectly promoting the launch of Taobao Special Edition wechat app.

Taobao special edition was first launched in Android and IOS stores on March 17, 2018. At that time, it was thought that Ali was the weapon of pinduoduo. Ali Duoduo seems to be able to catch up with 6.6 billion in the first quarter of 2018.

According to the data report of questmobile: in December 2018, pinduoduo app had 271 million monthly live users, second only to mobile Taobao (579 million), nearly 50 million ahead of Jingdong; in the small app end, pinduoduo ranked first with 109 million monthly live users, close to the total number of Jingdong, vipshop and Zhuanzhuan.

In the two years from 2018 to 2019, pinduoduo will be listed in the second half of 2018, and the 10 billion subsidy will be launched in the second half of 2019. Q4 financial report of the same year showed that the annual active users reached 580 million, becoming the second largest e-commerce platform. In the same year, the online Taobao special edition has been hovering in the free list of 500, there is no sense of existence.

Taobao's special price version, which was launched in 2018, has been hovering beyond the top 500 of the free list, and has no sense of existence. Obviously, the early Taobao special edition did not hinder the growth of pinduoduo. In March 2020, Taobao decided to restart the special edition of Taobao, and officially released the special edition of Taobao on the 26th of the same month.

This time the restart of Taobao special edition, the relevant person in charge of Alibaba has publicly declared that it is not pinduoduo, nor will it become the next pinduoduo. After the restart of Taobao special edition, the c2m mode of 1688 factory has been opened.

In the era of B2C e-commerce entering the stock competition, c2m mode has become the outlet of e-commerce platform competition because it simplifies the intermediate link, reduces the cost of sales, and makes the price of goods drop sharply.

However, for c2m mode, in addition to the problem of flexible customization of product end factory, there is also a problem of how to quickly obtain a large number of consumer demand initiation, also known as aggregate demand.

On sale of Taobao Special Edition WeChat small program, for Ali, it can get the sinking crowd outside the Amoy brand electric business through C2M's low price, and then form the fresh flow of Ali ecology through transformation. But for wechat, it is a subtle existence.

Applet connector

Taobao special edition is not the first small program for Alibaba to enter wechat. Alibaba's taopiao, hungry and other small programs have already entered. Launched in January 2016, wechat app is now becoming a force between wechat ecological flow and external enterprises.

It's just that compared with other types of small programs, Alibaba e-commerce has been flowing into wechat ecology, and the two haven't communicated with each other for a long time, which makes it a bit more historic and symbolic. Different from the independence of app, small programs depend on platform traffic, and the platform also relies on external small programs to continuously improve its user demand ecology.

Small programs are not only being made on wechat, but also by Internet manufacturers such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and byte. Even major mobile phone manufacturers have light applications similar to small programs. Now, as a new technical standard, applets are more of a new infrastructure.

At present, the app closest to the infrastructure should belong to wechat. As a wechat with 1.1 billion netizens in China, social traffic covers almost everyone, which also makes the app in wechat more inclusive in scenarios.

If we say that sinking the market is Alibaba's immediate anxiety, breaking app island and becoming a mobile Internet connector is another important mission of wechat app.

In the era of smart phones, independent app makes information form an island. Due to business competition, it is difficult for users to get all the information and services in one place. However, as the carrier of app, app, as a new infrastructure, is expected to re integrate information, so that users can have a better choice to break through the information island based on app.

The Alipay applet based on the flow of life service scenes is a monster that prepares IPO for this year. In March 2019, it cleared 100 million by sesame credit free deposit. Ali is the major shareholder of round D financing, accounting for 16.5% of the shares.

Now, the shadow of Alibaba e-commerce's entry into wechat's small app has appeared, and the connectivity of wechat's service scene through social relationship and small app is also reflected. From the small program can break the cold war between giants, only difference Taobao special version of wechat small program officially online, that day, how long do we have to wait?