Make up a beautiful story
Interpretation of entertainment value officer;
ID:wenyujiahizguan
"Is WeChat reading broken? I obviously have a paid unlimited card, and as a result, reading books costs me money? I asked other free users and said it didn't cost anything to see this. Am I stupid? " Not long ago, a Weibo by technology blogger @flypig revealed the "big data killing" of WeChat reading, which also caused many users to vomit deeply.
"Send unlimited cards every once in a while, and team up to draw unlimited cards. Every time you read a book, you will get a book coin in half an hour, and you will get some books for free if you have something to do. " -Since the launch of 20 15, the "free traffic exchange" strategy of WeChat reading has attracted a large number of "wool parties" and accumulated 200 million registered users for itself, becoming one of the most concerned reading platforms. However, since the beginning of this year, WeChat reading has finally begun to fully "close the net" and turned to a comprehensive payment model.
However, the high-end user base and "small but beautiful" tonality of WeChat reading make its ceiling much lower than that of free reading platforms such as tomatoes and seven cats, and it is also difficult to be compatible with advertising and online earning modes. After all, it failed to set off too much waves in the field of online writing. Instead, we are competing with the starting point for traffic and fighting with each other.
After successfully attracting a group of high-quality sticky users, Tencent will definitely not be satisfied with making WeChat reading a self-sufficient reading platform, but will find a more important role for it in the content ecology.
"The era of fish farming read by WeChat is over. Book money disappeared, and a large number of books became paid reading. The role of a pile of unlimited cards is becoming more and more limited, and the days of bonus hunter are gone forever. " Since last year, in order to turn the "wool party" into a paying user, WeChat reading can be described as painstaking and step by step.
The first step is to divide unlimited cards into "free unlimited cards" and "paid unlimited cards", and draw a clear line between Bai Piao users and paying users. More and more new books and serials can only be read by "paid unlimited cards", and the unlimited cards obtained by exchanging reading time, teaming up and sharing cannot surpass this "pay walls".
This change has also caused dissatisfaction among many users, who declared that "unlimited cards and unlimited reading are tantamount to disguised fraud". Perhaps WeChat readers themselves think that the "unlimited card" has existed in name only, so not long ago, they completely abolished this once "new weapon" and replaced it with "experience card" and "paid membership card", which also means that the days of bonus hunter users are gone forever.
20 15 When Tencent launched WeChat reading, the reading group unified the rivers and lakes. No one expected that the online text market suddenly changed after three years, and the free model subverted the market structure. Therefore, Tencent chose to use the WeChat social relationship chain to open the market through in-depth and serious reading, and form a differentiated synergy with reading and QQ reading.
With the unlimited card mode, social incentive mechanism and content strategy of publishing+full coverage, WeChat reading quickly opened the market. According to the figures published in the financial report of Reading Group, the registered users of WeChat reading exceeded 200 million by the end of 20 19. It is worth mentioning that the user quality of WeChat reading is significantly higher than that of online platform. In 2020, the WeChat reading team revealed to the outside world that young users aged 19-35 accounted for more than 60%, users with bachelor degree or above accounted for 80%, and users from provincial capitals/municipalities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen accounted for more than 80%.
However, focusing on serious reading means that WeChat readers are far less sticky than online platforms. Although the user base is huge, there is still a big gap between the number of active users and platforms such as palm reading, QQ reading, seven cats and tomatoes. It is precisely because of the elite nature of WeChat readers that their public opinion is far greater than their market share.
The social nature of acquaintances and the open privacy settings of WeChat reading mean that it is difficult for people to read brainless online texts without any burden. From the perspective of content operation and product design, WeChat reading also adheres to the excellent route that WeChat has always taken, making it difficult for it to undertake the mission of creating a free reading route for reading texts.
After gathering a group of top digital reading users in China and precipitating massive reading data and social relationships, WeChat reading has never found a way to realize it. Although the outside world attributed the Kindle's exit from China to WeChat reading, even though it won the first place in the digital reading market, the market space for both paid reading and reader hardware was very limited. Therefore, we may need to reconsider the role of WeChat reading from the perspective of Tencent's content ecology.
"Let me make a move. You should buy Fan Deng's books for reading. Online traffic is superimposed on the excellent content and offline service system established in Fan Deng. Emotional book opening/reading/selling is much more sticky than simple reading. Improve users' ARPU/ build a reading KOL ecosystem/form a reading course, and form an ecological closed loop in which the platform leads readers-readers and teachers to pay for courses. "
On the snowball, some reading investors enthusiastically "supported" WeChat reading, but many people in the comment area reminded him that WeChat reading was not for readers. In fact, investors have been complaining that reading articles is a "voluntary blood transfusion" for reading WeChat, and even ask: Is the value of reading articles for Tencent's benefit or its own benefit?
However, WeChat reading this "experimental field" that is difficult to expand may not be able to undertake Tencent's offensive task on the free online platform, and the dominant position is still firmly in the hands of the WeChat team. Wechat reading not only did not enter the hinterland of tomatoes and seven cats that took the sinking route, but gradually "bottomed out" from the starting point.
In May of this year, some users found that the WeChat paid reading unlimited card added a reminder: At the request of the starting point, the paid unlimited card does not support the starting point reading, so please purchase with caution. This hint is intriguing and reveals the relationship between the two platforms from close to sparse.
On the evening of June 30, Tencent released an internal document, announcing that Cheng Wu would no longer serve as vice president of Tencent and would become CEO of Tencent Holdings' Reading Group. It is widely believed that this personnel change means that Tencent will be further away from reading and can be interpreted together with the "breakup" between reading and WeChat reading.
For a long time, there has been a lot of speculation about when the "free traffic exchange" of WeChat reading will be closed. After all, Tencent can't always do charity, and the wool is on the sheep. Although WeChat reading has also tried advertising modes, such as 15s advertising when reading experience cards, it is difficult to insert advertisements in books like other platforms, and finally it returns to the "old road" of content payment.
We might as well calculate the income scale of WeChat reading according to the number of heavy users. The medal system shows that more than 2 million users have read for more than 65,438+000 days. If everyone is willing to pay for barrier-free reading, the paid members of WeChat reading should be around 2 million. According to the price of 169 yuan, the paid income of WeChat reading for one year is 338 million. After deducting the 70% share of publishing institutions, the annual net income of the platform is only 654.38+0 billion yuan, which can be ignored in Tencent's total income of 560 billion yuan in 2026.5438+0.
In the future, it will not be ruled out that the WeChat reading club will attack the upstream, relying on big data to take the initiative to win the copyright of potential works, not only serving Tencent itself, but becoming the copyright library of the entire film and television industry.
From June 5438 to February 2020, WeChat separated the reading and listening function of WeChat and launched the reading and listening App of WeChat. Compared with QQ music, the user group of WeChat listening to books is more in line with the user group of podcasts, audio books and radio dramas, and it is expected to become the vanguard of Tencent's sound matrix in the future, forming a deep synergy with the IP resources of reading texts.