Xiami Music is turned off, Nuts mobile phone is stopped, now Mi Talk will be stopped again. According to an announcement issued by Michao App, Michao’s service will be suspended at 12:00 on February 19, 2021 due to business changes. However, is the road to the Internet really difficult, and who will be shut down next?
In addition, it is very ironic that when Mi Chat announced the suspension of services, WeChat, which dominated the social industry for all, was celebrating its tenth anniversary. Michao's dejected exit signifies that Xiaomi's social dream is heading for the exit, and it also means that another ten-year veteran is missing from the social battlefield competing with Tencent.
However, why did Xiaomi's social dream "lost"? Compared with WeChat, what is missing from the Mi Fan and ecological Xiaomi? Is Xiaomi's Internet road going well in the future?
"Hot fan" Mi Chat died of financial fraud?
Xiaomi's social dreams are finally broken, and Michao has not become a gathering place for "enthusiasts", but has become a concentration camp of "financial fraud".
I was not surprised to hear that Mi Talk will be suspended, and I even think it will happen sooner or later. Recalling the beginning of the establishment of Mi Talk, there were also glorious moments. In December 2010, the first domestic Kik-like application Michao was born, which is also the first mobile instant chat software in China; at that time, Michao had a rapid number of users through mobile phone contact chat, voice intercom and other functions that were different from QQ at the time. Break 1 million.
However, how did Tencent give up the market to others at that time. Later, in January 2011, WeChat launched the benchmarking with Michao, which quickly harvested the emerging mobile social market through QQ drainage and a series of functions that facilitate the social interaction of strangers.
After that, Mi Talk gradually declined, and now it is announced that it will be suspended. Among them, Mi Talk has undergone many transformations. From the initial socialization of the whole people to the social interaction with strangers, to the online community platform serving the "enthusiasts" in the Xiaomi ecology, Mi Talk has not developed many times.
But among them, Mi Talk is more in line with Xiaomi's development strategy and should be positioned as an online community, that is, to become a "gathering place for enthusiasts" to help Mi Fan find its own interests. At that time, Mi Talk, together with Xiaomi mobile phones and MIUI system, also formed the three backbones of the early Xiaomi business map.
However, what is the status quo of Mi Talk, which is about to stop serving after losing competition?
Not a gathering place for enthusiasts, but a concentration camp of "financial fraud". Search for the "Mi Talk Fraud" keyword on Baidu, you can find a lot of news about Mi Talk financial fraud, and even the municipal public security bureau has notified Mi Talk as a stranger who has given a new coat to "Financial Fraud" Social APP.
Screenshot from: Baidu search
Once, why did the Mi Talk , which is comparable to WeChat, fall here?
First, Michao, which has experienced high-light moments, still has a certain user base and complete chat functions. Among them, real-time voice and video intercom calls, information communication, and image and video sending and receiving functions increase user trust, but also provide crooks A more convenient hotbed of fraud.
Second, the essence is the maintenance and control of the Michao platform, which is also not enough by Xiaomi. It is understood that after the iOS version of Mi Talk was updated in November 2016, the product has not been updated for nearly 2 years. The long period of non-update indicates that Xiaomi has given up Mi Talk. Then at the 2018 Xiaomi conference, Mi Talk returned to the public eye.
However, the investment is not as high as WeChat's Michao, and the cost of control and maintenance on the platform is naturally low. This provides a breeding ground for criminals.
However, Miliao, now a concentration camp for financial fraud, is only a portrayal of the status quo after defeat. However, what is the root cause of Mi Talk's failure? What are the factors that affect the survival of social products?
Xiaomi, which has rice noodles and ecology, is not good at socializing
Xiaomi, with its rice noodles and MIUI ecology, is not good at socializing.
Xiaomi’s social networking is not without its advantages. According to data from the 2014 Xiaomi annual meeting, Xiaomi’s MIUI system has already activated 170 million users through the Internet. After six years of development, the number of rice fans is even more unpredictable.
For Xiaomi, having hundreds of millions of Mi Fan users is its advantage as a social product, and MIUI ecology is an excellent place to stick users. However, having users and ecology alone cannot make a good social product, because retention and duration are the curse that social products are difficult to break.
Even WeChat, the leader in the social field, also has the bottleneck of user retention and time growth. In Q3 of 2020, Tencent's WeChat and WeChat monthly active users reached 1.21 billion. As early as 2017, when WeChat reached 1 billion monthly active users, some analysts said that WeChat user growth had entered a bottleneck period.
In addition, from the increasing variety of WeChat functions, we can see that it is spending every effort to activate the user's use time.
In recent years, on the popular stranger social circuit, Momo also faces the problem of how to improve user retention and duration. Financial report data shows that in Q2 of 2020, Momo's MAU was 111.5 million, compared with 113.5 million MAU in the same period last year, entering a negative growth stage.
It can be seen that retention and duration are key elements for the survival of social products, and the profitability of social platforms depends on both. However, after Michao failed to compete with WeChat at the beginning of its establishment, user retention and duration were even more talked about a good scale. Therefore, it is obvious that Mi Talk cannot succeed.
But why can't Mi Talk break the curse and hold the two great swords of retention and duration?
First, the failure to compete with WeChat in the early stage of the competition determined the end of Michao. You must know that the social circuit is very special, with extremely high monopoly, high mortality, and a higher rate of forgetting.
The competition on the social circuit has never stopped. In the early years, Microsoft's MSN, domestic mobile launched Yixin, and later Ali and Byte launched corresponding social products, and there was also the explosion of stranger social products Momo. Fire means that this track is not a peaceful track after all, and the death rate is high. Therefore, a platform that loses in the competition is easily left by users.
Therefore, there is no intermediate state on the social circuit, either success or death. When Tencent started WeChat, Michao had no room for survival. Moreover, I didn't lag behind in Michao, and the state of failing to achieve success also made him move towards the death level.
Second, the periodic nature of social products determines the lifespan of Michat. Since the core users of social products will change every five years, when the first batch of 00 starts to go to university, it means that new social product needs will emerge.
However, the "enthusiasts" attracted by Mi Talk through Xiaomi's ecology are aging, and Generation Z, the main force of the new generation of consumers, is obviously not aware of Mi Talk. This shows that Michat, who cannot attract new users, talks about user retention and duration.
Third, in the final analysis, Xiaomi didn't pay enough attention to Mi Talk, and the positioning was inaccurate after repeatedly giving up and regaining Mi Talk. Although Lei Jun once chanted the slogan of doing social business, Xiaomi still paid more attention to the mobile phone product line in the later period, and did not spend enough thought on socializing.
Therefore, it can be said that Mi Talk's "death" is a foregone conclusion.
However, the reason why Xiaomi regained Michao many times is Lei Jun's Internet dream. Lei Jun is not willing to be a mobile phone manufacturer. He wants to do the Internet industry in order to make Xiaomi an Internet company with a higher P/E ratio.
Lei Jun once stated in an open letter, "Xiaomi is not a pure hardware company, but an innovation-driven Internet company." However, Mi Talk, one of the "Three Generals" of Xiaomi Internet, has died, and Xiaomi's Internet road is really easy to follow. ?
The road to Xiaomi's Internet is difficult to follow
Although Lei Jun's social dreams are shattered, Xiaomi's ambition to build an Internet super empire will not stand still, and the closure of Mi Talk is only a part of Xiaomi's Internet path that needs to be discarded.
Currently, based on its own mobile phones and IoT business, Xiaomi is increasing its investment in Internet services such as advertising, finance, and games. Under the leadership of Lei Jun, Xiaomi has also invested in nearly 400 companies. Among them, there are many Internet companies, such as the early YY Live Broadcast, Youqi Network, and iQiyi.
In addition, some of the 400 companies are strategic investment funds, and Xiaomi has invested in nearly 300 of them, most of which are Internet of Things and AIoT products.
It can be seen that Xiaomi’s future Internet road is actually betting on "5G+AIoT", which is called the next generation super Internet by Lei Jun. However, in the rapid development stage of the Internet industry, is the road of Xiaomi Super Internet easy to follow?
First of all, it is difficult for Xiaomi to get rid of the label of a mobile phone manufacturer and become an Internet mobile phone brand company. Although Xiaomi has always positioned itself as a company different from ordinary mobile phone manufacturers, it considers itself an Internet company.
But from the data point of view, Xiaomi can't get a foothold in this statement. In Q3 of 2020, the core driving force for the rapid growth of Xiaomi's operating income will still come from the rapid growth of the mobile phone business. The sales of mobile phones increased by 45% year-on-year to 47 million units. It can be seen that Xiaomi's revenue is still highly mobile phone business.
The Xiaomi Internet business is actually based on the expansion of the traffic portal based on the Xiaomi mobile phone ecology. However, for Xiaomi, this type of Internet business is still in the stage of making a fuss, let alone making waves in the market. Currently, Xiaomi's Internet business revenue has never exceeded 10%.
Secondly, although the term Xiaomi’s Internet has been replaced by AIOT, the prospects for building an Internet+ super empire are huge. However, as giants are all around, Xiaomi will face considerable challenges in the future.
Although compared with other domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi has a first-mover advantage in the AIoT field, and has built the Xiaomi industry chain and won the title of "the richest AIoT category". Xiaomi's annual report disclosed that in 2019, the number of its ecological chain companies has reached 290, covering thousands of SKUs.
However, as Internet giants have set their sights on this track, such as Apple, Google, Huawei, etc., how Xiaomi maintains its advantages and guarantees the quality of products and services is still uncertain. In addition, the domestic AIoT technology is still in its infancy, and the application and landing of future scenarios will also have a greater degree of difficulty.
Therefore, it can be known that Xiaomi's industry chain based on "5G+AIOT" still has a long way to go.
Finally, in addition to mobile phone hardware products, Xiaomi should be most proud of MIUI ecosystem. And around this ecosystem Xiaomi can derive a number of Internet value-added services. In addition, the future competition of Internet giants is actually based on the ecological closed-loop construction, such as Ali's e-commerce ecological empire, JD's omni-channel ecological layout, and Apple's iOS system ecosystem.
Xiaomi’s MIUI system can build its own ecological barriers, but as Xiaomi is highly dependent on its mobile phone business, it is not yet known when the Internet business will become the main force. But what we can know is that Xiaomi will still rely on the ecology to do Internet business.
Conclusion:
In summary, although Mi Talk will soon be suspended, Xiaomi Internet Dream will not stop. When the Xiaomi Super Internet Empire can be successfully built, it will depend on Xiaomi's continuous investment in the ecological chain. The battle of the future Internet is also the battle of the ecological chain.
Therefore, in recent times, many Internet products in different fields have been suspended or closed. Everyone has one thing in common. That is, in the highly developed Internet torrent, they have lost their core competitive element-the establishment of "ecological barriers". perfect.
Author: Yexiao An
Article source: Songguo Finance, please indicate the copyright for reprinting.