Under the siege of Tencent, how can Zhang Yiming’s headlines break through today？

With the advantages of recommendation engine and headline platform, today’s headlines have been booming in the last two years. Even in 2014, when they were besieged by many portals such as Sohu, they all faced it easily and shouted that they should achieve "150 million overall DAU".(number of Daily Active User)The grand goal!

However, things have been a little rough. Since last year, Tencent suddenly began to wake up and launched the Daily Express APP. Driven by many products such as WeChat, Appbao, Tencent.com and Qzone, the MAU of Daily Express.(Monthly users)It has soared to more than 40 million. However, this is not enough. Tencent News, the main APP product of Tencent.com, has also quickly switched to a recommendation engine to distribute content.

We should know that Tencent’s products in the information market are like clouds. Besides Tencent News and Daily Express APP, it also includes Tencent News WeChat official account, WeChat official account, QQ browser headlines, Tencent.com, mobile phone Tencent.com, WeChat public platform and so on. It is said that the daily PV of WeChat WeChat official account alone has reached 3 billion times, which is close to the headline volume today, not to mention Tencent, which covers 150 million times a day.

Today’s headlines PK Tencent OMG products

Coupled with Tencent Zhang Zhidong’s propaganda: "Today’s headlines have taken a completely different path, all in the cloud, learning users’ reading preferences according to their clicks and interests, thus forming thousands of people’s push content, which is highly subversive. The Internet industry is like this. All the lead is temporary, and subversion is likely to come from another completely different model, which is right for OMG.(Note: Network Media Business Group)For my colleagues, I expect them to have more innovations and take part in the competition of the next generation of cloud intelligent information services with their own courage. "Today’s headlines seem to be in jeopardy.

However, a product has an inherent user population and growth trajectory. If it can succeed, it must have its product and service advantages. If it dies, it means the loss of service advantages. So today’s headlines have lost their product and service advantages in the face of the encirclement of so many Tencent products. We need to analyze this in detail from the perspective of business logic.

Business logic

The business logic of today’s headlines consists of two parts, one is the mode reconstruction to release the content production capacity, and the other is the recommendation mechanism to meet the unknown needs of users, which together build the service advantages of today’s headline products.

1. Pattern reconstruction releases content production capacity.

After entering the Internet age, human beings announced that they had entered a period of information surplus, but the actual situation is that there is an abnormal surplus of junk information, while high-quality content is still very scarce. Although major portals, vertical media, newspapers, magazines, etc., all want to solve this problem, but all have failed.

So we see that the news reported and updated by major portals and vertical media every day is similar, either from reprinting each other, or the same story is slightly revised and released again, which is really annoying. However, the media people did not deeply reflect on and question the real reason for the lack of content.

A layman who does search, however, sees through the essence, and resolutely separates the three links of content production, content distribution and revenue realization, so that producers can adjust the content to match users’ preferences in the competition, so that each link does less and more professional things, thus greatly releasing the content production capacity and promoting the generation of high-quality content.

Today’s headline business logic

The above picture is the core business logic of today’s headlines, which is quite different from traditional portals in terms of information production, distribution and realization. On the contrary, it is more like a cloud infrastructure in the field of news and information, allowing content to flow freely on it.

2. Recommendation mechanism meets users’ unknown needs.

Whether it is the new content platforms such as Today’s Headline and WeChat public account, or the four major portals, Weibo and sub-professional websites, they are all content distribution channels, and their values are to promote the efficient production and flow of information and create value by reaching users.

In contrast, the rapid development of today’s headlines is to better meet the needs of users at the level of information distribution. Let’s compare and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of portals, public accounts and today’s headlines in meeting user needs:

(1) Portal website

Main features: editing, recommending and distributing information mechanism

(1) editors actively select content and recommend it, and all users look at the same page content;

② Generally, there is only one version of the portal homepage, and the content display of each channel is fixed, so is the content display of the channel homepage, and the total recommended information is fixed.

The advantage of the portal website is that the content is divided by subjects, and the quality is high. The disadvantage is that the content recommendation is very small, and many interesting contents are not specially designed for it, especially those of ordinary users.

(2) WeChat public number

Main features: subscription and social distribution information mechanism

① The content production is highly detailed, and the content produced by different public numbers is highly differentiated and extremely specialized;

It is difficult for users to find high-quality public numbers, but once they find them, they will continue to pay attention and enjoy the value they bring;

The advantage of public number is that the content is professional and rich in learning value, and the disadvantage is that it is difficult to find high-value public numbers.

(3) Today’s headlines

Main features: Recommend information distribution mechanism.

① The machine makes recommendations based on the content quality, and the recommended content is very rich.(relative to portal), massive content for you to read;

2 The content covers all aspects, no longer limited to channel division, and fully meets your interests;

The advantage of today’s headlines is that the content is huge, colorful, and in line with their own tastes, and the disadvantage is that it is difficult to see professional content;

Through the above comparison, we can see that WeChat mainly focuses on deep segmentation or professional content, and has little overlap with the other two types of content. Today, the model between headlines and portals is similar, and the competition between them is fierce.The reason why today’s headlines can rise so quickly stems from two advantages behind them, as follows:

(1) The content richness of today’s headlines is much higher than the single layout mechanism of the portal.Although such a rich content is divided into channel attributes, the recommendation mechanism has essentially broken the concept of channels, so there are n potential channels, which is far greater than the content range of 50 channels in traditional portals. Therefore,Today’s headlines are completely successful in both content quantity and content scope.

(2) From the user level, the proportion of professional users in the total user group may be less than 30%, and the proportion of general public users, including farmers, ordinary workers and the elderly, exceeds 70%. The portal website extremely ignores the needs of these people, who work hard all day to watch the news and relax, but the content recommended by the portal.(Political, social, economic, entertainment …)Let them fall into another hard mental work, I really don’t know what value these contents have for them.Editors may say, what’s wrong with knowing something about politics, society and learning something in their spare time? These editors should go to the construction site for two years and then comment on how valuable these are to them).

On the contrary, today’s headlines are based on recommendation algorithm and headline number platform, which can well meet the needs of these ordinary users, which have never been concerned about before and can not be met.(under the fixed layout mechanism)Demand, so to be exact,Today’s headlines rise from a forgotten blank demand field.And the needs of mainstream mass users.

In fact, today’s headline CEO Zhang Yiming has implicitly pointed out that he said in a media conversation: "Our users are actually quite diverse. There are people in their fifties and sixties who are a little older. It is conceivable that they will open headlines at home to pass the time, or learn to cook, play chess and fish; At the same time, entrepreneurs will get up every day to read the latest entrepreneurial information through headlines; And urban women may watch entertainment news through headlines. If we must summarize the attributes, no matter what age level, occupation, income level and region, the classic users of our products should be people who are relatively sensitive to information and have a stronger thirst for knowledge and curiosity. "

Therefore, it can be said thatToday’s headlines cater to the needs of ordinary users, thereby gradually eroding the low-end user groups of portal websites, thus taking off rapidly.

With the model advantage, today’s headlines quickly surpassed Netease, Sohu and Sina, and grew into the second largest content distribution channel in China after Tencent. At the same time, Tencent OMG’s online media business group is also stepping up its transformation and actively responding to the challenges brought by today’s headlines. The product layouts of both parties are as follows:

Business logic analysis only explains the service advantages of various modes in principle. Let’s analyze the competitive situation of both sides through data.

Today’s headlines and MAU data of Tencent OMG products

As shown in the above picture, at present, MAU of Daily Express(monthly active users)It is about half of today’s headlines, and the MAU of Tencent News Client is about twice that of today’s headlines. This shows that Tencent OMG still has an advantage in terms of user volume, but in contrast, today’s headline MAU growth rate exceeds 100%, far better than Tencent News.

Monthly average length of major information products

However, when we compare the average monthly length of Android on both sides,(minutes)Data, but found that today’s headline monthly average user time is about three times that of Tencent News and six times that of Daily Express. Such a huge gap shows that Tencent OMG’s products imitate today’s headlines, but in terms of recommendation mechanism and content quality,(information overload, lack of life knowledge)There is still a big gap with today’s headlines, which makes users reluctant to spend more time reading content in the APP.

Note: The figure also shows other contents.

(1) In terms of monthly per capita user duration, today’s headlines have exceeded 10,000 people, and are now close to half of WeChat. One is private social interaction+content, and the other is gray social interaction+content. Is Zhang Xiaolong under pressure?

(2) Today’s headlines have stripped off the core content reading of browsers, and the user duration of UC/QQ browsers has dropped rapidly. I really feel sad for them!

(3) Today’s headline is a search without input content, and Baidu has a search with input content. Does Li Yanhong feel pressured?

development tactics

On the whole, the competition between today’s headlines and Tencent OMG seems to be slowly tilting towards today’s headlines, but considering that the competition in the information field has always lasted for a long time, this fierce battle may last for a long time. In this case, the best development strategy for today’s headlines is to consolidate the headline business, as follows:

1. Content production

The content source of today’s headlines is mainly the "headline number" platform. Every day, a large amount of content is generated and continuously input into the headline ecology, thus ensuring the prosperity of the headline ecology. Therefore, in order to continue to expand the headline ecology, we need to take some measures to assist the headline platform to develop, including: improving media tools, supporting resources, launching original protection, increasing the share amount, exploring revenue models, and inviting high-quality media to stay.

2. Improve the efficiency of the algorithm

Today’s headlines are active distribution systems based on machine algorithms. Therefore, the efficiency of content distribution can be continuously improved by continuously optimizing machine algorithms and making users’ preferences more deeply matched with the content distributed by machines. At present, in terms of content understanding and analysis, artificial intelligence technology represented by deep learning is undoubtedly the best choice, so headlines need to spend a lot of money on this layout to improve their distribution efficiency and matching.

3. Revenue model

At present, the annual income of "Today’s Headlines" is about 3 billion, most of which comes from the advertisements of opening screen, homepage information flow and channel page information flow. However, this revenue scale is 4,200 yuan compared with as many as 60,000 headline platforms.(Average revenue per person per month)ofThe per capita output value is still meager, which is not enough to build a strong content ecology.

Therefore, today’s headlines should make more commercialization attempts in the following areas to find an efficient revenue model suitable for headlines:

(1) Following the idea of content e-commerce, with the headline number as the center, divert traffic to the e-commerce website and try to gain revenue;

(2) Explore along the direction of information connection service industry and conduct diversion to service industry;

(3) Develop new business based on today’s headlines and find new niche markets.

Headline content big ecology

We see that today’s headlines have been continuously expanded in the direction of video, topic and question and answer. In the future, it is likely to be developed in the fields of literature, music, gray-scale social interaction, animation, games and live broadcast, so as to form a stable content ecological community. As shown in the above picture, do you find that this picture is a bit like Tencent’s business ecology (refer to Tencent’s current advertising revenue, sorry for its huge content ecology)? Just change CITIC’s today’s headlines into WeChat +QQ.

Today’s headline and Tencent’s tearing war will probably last for a long time, and in the future, the two sides will compete in various segments of the content.

This article comes from the well-known strategic publishing platform-Huizhi Chuangxiang public number: openu_cc, please contact WeChat official account: openu_cc for authorization.