Starting from today, when you talk about the traffic king of Douyin, there must be a place for "Zhang Daxian".
, the "King's First Brother" born in the 90s, has been the most popular anchor of "Honor of Kings" for five consecutive years. He is also the well-deserved head anchor of Huya. He has recently officially started broadcasting on Douyin. The statistics of the first battle are as follows: 's five-hour live broadcast had more than 47 million viewers, with a peak audience of nearly one million, cumulative likes of more than 1 billion, and one million new fans.
No matter which one is placed on the Huya platform, it can be written into history.
This is the power of Douyin’s traffic.
In the past five years, Zhang Daxian has been able to fly through the Canyon of Kings countless times on his own, but there is a gap between "Honor of Kings" and Douyin.
Until recently, Tencent became Douyin’s “big brother”.
From beating mandarin ducks to running in both directions
To some extent, "Honor of Kings" and Douyin staged a "Romeo and Juliet" show. One is the most popular mobile game, which needs massive exposure to attract new users; the other is the short video platform with the largest traffic, which needs highly sticky content such as game live broadcasts.
But Lang Qing and Concubine Yi are always beaten by their parents who don’t understand the style. Since 2016, Tencent and Bytedance have had more and more frictions. The focus has been on Tencent's games, including "Honor of Kings", which are broadcast live on multiple platforms of Bytedance, infringing copyright.
The successive frictions continued until January 2019. The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court ruled that ByteDance’s other products should immediately stop live broadcasting the “Honor of Kings” game content.
Regarding this matter, both Wangzhe and Douyin are definitely the victims, but the parents of both sides have their own calculations.
For Tencent, it had already invested in game live streaming platforms such as Huya and Douyu. It had its own pool of traffic and could not rely on Douyin. Especially after 2018, Byte began to expand its game business, and Tencent also had the hidden worry of "not allowing others to sleep peacefully under the bed."
As for Byte, since it has decided to make games, continues to increase investment, and is at odds with Tencent in many fields, it is already expected that the two sides will break up. Since 2019, Byte has continued to invest more than 30 billion in the gaming industry and launched more than 20 mergers and acquisitions. The core gaming company has become a business line that keeps pace with Douyin and TikTok.
The general trend of the world will change at any time. First, Tencent failed to complete the merger of the two major platforms Huya and Douyu. The game live broadcast platform continued to lose users, most of which went to Douyin.
In fact, even if the two major platforms are successfully merged, Tencent will still need a larger traffic pool to nourish its games. After all, the vertical game live broadcast platform has limited traffic. After so many years of exploration, the conversion is almost the same.
On the other side, Douyin, which has 300 million game fans, is also looking to monetize . Tencent games represented by "Honor of Kings" are the best cooperation targets. It just so happened that after years of burning real money, Byte also gave up the idea of making games. At the end of last year, Zhaoxiguangnian announced its dissolution.
Then, at least in the gaming field, the bad blood between the two parents dissipated. This is how "Glory of the King" and Douyin go in both directions.
Meet and laugh, let go of grudges
Coincidentally, in the past two days, there is also a pair of enemies who have publicly turned their hostility into friendship. They are "Cardinal" Zhou Hongyi and Fu Sheng of Cheetah Mobile. The former is the boss of the latter, and the latter is also the pioneer of the former. As a result, they parted ways due to differences in the company's development concepts, and they even went to court for a time.
The matter goes back to 2005. In the year of , Fu Sheng followed Zhou Hongyi from 3721 to Qihoo 360, and led the team to create "Rogue Buster", which was mainly used to detect and kill rogue software, which later became 360 Security Guard. The product directly changed Qihoo's core business from search to security.
But soon, differences arose between the product founders and the company founders, which led to conflicts. In October 2008, Fu Sheng resigned and left.18 months later, Fu Sheng, who ended his competitive period, launched free anti-virus software and entered the hinterland of 360. Later, Fu Sheng was appreciated by Lei Jun, and they hit it off and formed Kingsoft Network, which is the predecessor of Cheetah Mobile.
For Lao Zhou, who has always refused to admit defeat, Fu Sheng's move was tantamount to a backstab. In September 2011, Qihoo 360 launched a lawsuit accusing Fu Shenghe and his company of using Qihoo’s confidential information to develop security software. Subsequently, a disgraceful war of words broke out between the two parties. More than 360 senior executives issued a document saying that Fu Sheng left because he had cheated on others and opened a company privately outside. Zhou Hongyi directly said that Fu Sheng was a "traitor."
Fu Sheng immediately published a long article "19 Lies Made Up by Zhou Hongyi" on Weibo to fight back.
In short, the two sides were so quarreling at that time that it would be an understatement to say that the relationship was cut off. Who would have thought that more than 10 years later, the two of them would be sitting together talking and laughing.
In the words of Zhou Hongyi, there is no need to dwell on things that are old and rotten. People should look forward. He praised Fu Sheng for making great progress compared to when he was younger 17 years ago. His hormone levels have also dropped and he is a softer person.
Look forward, don’t look back.
Many people regard Lao Zhou and Fu Sheng’s resolution of their differences as “two frustrated middle-aged people tied together for hype.” Indeed, Qihoo 360 and Cheetah Mobile have not been so happy. But from a more positive perspective, two frustrated middle-aged people once again found the same battlefield that excites them, that is, large models.
Previously, Fu Sheng quoted a netizen on Weibo: "There is nothing among men that cannot be solved by a big model..." Two of the few people who have experienced the PC era and the mobile Internet era still insist on working hard. The veterans who have entered the game are standing on the starting line of large models, and a new wave of technology is coming.
For Tencent and Byte, the purpose of abandoning their past grievances is to better stabilize the current situation. China's Internet has long passed the period of competition and staking, and is facing saturation both in terms of the number of people surfing the Internet and the average amount of time online. When an incremental market transitions to a stock market, the external environment changes drastically, and the original play style needs to change.
Especially the giants who are at the top and have constant friction, can borrow their respective resource endowments, transfer some of their less core interests, and join forces with their former opponents to keep warm. For example, WeChat allows Taobao to open mini programs, relaxes controls on Douyin, Taobao links, etc.
Of course, in the core business, such as e-commerce, Taobao Tmall and Douyin e-commerce will still fight fiercely.
Whether it is Tencent Byte or Zhou Fusheng, they are the epitome of China's Internet companies fighting against the cycle: firmly believes in the future, but has to be based on the present. The smell of "sharing weal and woe" that netizens smell is true, as is the youthful spirit exuded by the middle-aged man.
You don’t have to believe in love, but please believe in the power of cycles and technology.
