Yesterday all day, I believe everyone's WeChat Moments were flooded with posts, as after Jack Ma and Jonathan Lu urged employees to promote Alibaba's IM application "Laiwang", the poor employees promoted their "Laiwang" account QR codes everywhere. The editor also noticed that many colleagues, out of "helping a buddy not miss year-end bonuses, so just follow them once," have joined the Laiwang team.
The WeChat model has made many people see opportunities. However, Yixin, which was launched several months ago, started with great fanfare but now has become a "zombie app" in how many people's phones? Just like various TV manufacturers launching smart TVs, IM giants are also starting to join in, trying hard to create a red ocean.
Jack Ma himself has come out multiple times to support "Laiwang." Yesterday, he even posted on the internal network expressing his feelings, saying that WeChat's existence is like the one-child policy making people uncomfortable, while "Laiwang" is like having a second child. Even though there is already an older brother, having a second child is still very important.
The strong promotion of "Laiwang" shows Alibaba's anxiety, but can it win over users? Can it break free from the mindset that "WeChat" has already created and forge its own path?
In the past two days, the online rumors about Jack Ma and Jonathan Lu promoting Alibaba's IM application "Laiwang" through employees have caught everyone's attention. With WeChat's user base surpassing 500 million and Yixin showing signs of decline, why is Alibaba still so persistent in strongly promoting "Laiwang" and joining the mobile social tool battlefield that appears to be already set?
A History of Ali Social Products: Repeated Failures and Attempts
Social networking has always been a key area for Alibaba. In the PC domain, Alibaba has ventured into the social networking field multiple times. Starting from 2008, Alibaba successively launched social products such as Yahoo Relationship, Taojianghu, and Love Shopping. However, the contradiction between maintaining interpersonal relationships at the core of social networks and focusing on transactions and closing deals in e-commerce has led to Alibaba's repeated failures.
For Alibaba, it took nine years for Taobao + Tmall retail sales to exceed 1 trillion yuan. On the journey from 1 trillion to 10 trillion, social commerce undoubtedly becomes the most crucial breakthrough.
At the same time, under the backdrop of the mobile wave, whether the existing core business can successfully transition to mobile becomes the key to future survival. Therefore, Alibaba must develop a product that carries the mission of future mobile social commerce. And the foundation of social commerce lies in recommendations among acquaintances; traffic recommended by friends and trusted individuals could potentially become an important support for Alibaba's transaction volume growth.
So, can the major chess pieces in the Alibaba ecosystem on the mobile end shoulder this responsibility? Let's review:
UCweb: One of the entry points of mobile internet, lacks social genes Mobile Taobao: Without a doubt, it is merely a web-based mobile version, lacking social genes Weitao: An important product derived from Mobile Taobao, positioned as an entry point in the mobile consumption sector Sina Weibo: A typical product of big V culture and fan culture. Nowadays, the activity level of ordinary users on Sina Weibo continues to decrease, and more often it resembles a news client. Acquaintance relationship chains are not active here, and for Alibaba's exploration of social commerce, Sina Weibo is more like just another advertising display board, unable to shoulder the heavy responsibility. Momo: A typical stranger social application Aliwangwang: A communication tool between buyers and sellers, targeting fixed transaction scenarios
It is not difficult to see that although the Alibaba ecosystem appears strong in the mobile application field, none of its products can bear the mission of its social commerce. Therefore, the key to the future core business of Alibaba, both in terms of stock and increment, lies in the success or failure of social commerce. The promotion of "Laiwang" is both a defensive battle and an offensive move.
Challenges in Promoting Laiwang
As we all know, communication products have strong network externalities, meaning that the utility each user gets from using the product is related to the total number of users. WeChat currently occupies the majority of mobile social territory. For most people, their existing social connections already exist within WeChat. "Laiwang" is positioned as private, familiar person-to-person communication, and mobile social tools possess a typical Matthew effect. Even if there is only a difference of one friend between two platforms' social connections, the platform with fewer friends will only become the second choice.
Additionally, even if the social connections for a specific user are the same on both platforms, "Laiwang" still faces the harsh rejection of user habits. It’s like when 360 launched its "Ctrl Ctrl" feature during the 3B war in March this year. Although in certain practical scenarios this method might be more convenient, the power of habit is strong. Most users, even knowing that this function is easy to use, still open the browser and input the domain name to request Baidu's help. Therefore, compared to the competition in the search market, "Laiwang" faces even fiercer and crueler competition.
Can Laiwang Breakthrough?
According to CNNIC statistics, by the end of June 2013, the scale of mobile Internet users in our country reached 464 million, increasing by approximately 43.79 million people since the end of 2012. Due to the limitations of infrastructure and learning costs, many future users will bypass the PC Internet stage and directly enter the mobile Internet era. For these users, "Laiwang" and WeChat are on the same starting line, and there is a good chance to attract them.
Besides, China has a large population base, and diversified user needs naturally exist. There are still many细分opportunities in the market, theoretically speaking, it is impossible for WeChat alone to monopolize the market. Comparatively look at the evolution of the domestic search market. Under the absolute advantages of Baidu in brand, capital, channel, and technology, 360, with the right strategy and tenacious wolf spirit, increased its market share to 23% from zero in just over a year. Therefore, theoretically speaking, as long as Alibaba persists with an All-in determination and supports it with the correct strategy, there should still be a relatively large opportunity.
Possible Strategies for Alibaba
The right strategy will be the biggest key to determining whether "Laiwang" can succeed.
Positioned as secure private communication among acquaintances, providing features such as disappearing messages, doodle functions, and group chats of up to 500 people, it seems to give it competitive advantages against WeChat. But Sun Tzu's Art of War says, "The direct method may gain battles, but indirect methods will secure victory." The current functional differences can only solve the problem of retaining users after they have been acquired, which can only be considered as "the direct method" and does not have enough appeal to attract users. The success or failure of "Laiwang" still depends on whether there are any "indirect methods".
The thing that beats WeChat is definitely not another WeChat. In the long-term strategy, "Laiwang" aims to challenge WeChat, but in the early stages of market penetration, it absolutely cannot just focus on WeChat's current advantageous areas, expecting to forcibly promote itself by throwing money and KPIs. Even if it gains a considerable number of users in the short term, the loyalty of these users will inevitably be low, and this practice is nothing more than pulling up seedlings to help them grow, unsustainable.
China's revolutionary experience tells us that avoiding heavy blows, surrounding cities from rural areas, and gradually infiltrating is the right way. In the early stages of attracting users, it needs to target niche groups as much as possible. For example, the mobile terminal application Pappa has over 20 million users, and its positioning is significantly different from WeChat. "Laiwang" has also considered similar functions in its feature planning. Alibaba has a large number of celebrity resources and quality media resources. Using these resources to fully leverage the characteristics of this function to attract users is feasible.
Moreover, backed by the Alibaba e-commerce empire, binding some preferential privileges to "Laiwang" accounts, direct material incentives would surely attract a large number of users. Therefore, during the promotion process, fully utilizing the characteristics of differentiated functions and fully leveraging the advantages of Alibaba's e-commerce resources will undoubtedly be the two basic strategies that Alibaba will adopt in the future.
WeChat's dominance seems invincible, Yixin's subsequent disappointment, and Mr. Ma's high-profile proclamation of a determined victory add too many highlights and suspense to this competition in the mobile social field. We look forward to another exciting showdown!