(Chinese Version)

 1 

In 2003, Americans first coined the phrase “we media”.

In 2005, blog first emerged and became quite popular in China. Among different Chinese translation versions, most people agreed to use “Boke” to refer to blog. Blog was the second typical we media after personal websites. In the heyday of blogs in 2008, there were more than 100 million bloggers across China.

In 2009, Sina Weibo was first launched and soon brought to the very forefront of public attention. Sina quickly turned Weibo into one of the major Internet social networking sites in China by means of its huge influence as a media giant. The development of Sina Weibo peaked in 2011. At present, although it’s already not the golden days, Weibo, the third typical we media after blog, still has over 60 million active users every day.

In 2011, Tencent WeChat was first launched as an interpersonal communication tool. The next year, however, Tencent added public account service to WeChat, attracting tens of thousands of companies, organizations and individuals to open their own public account on WeChat. In a sense, WeChat public account service has brought blog back to life. Up till now, there are already over 8 million public accounts on WeChat, that is to say, every 160 Chinese has a public account on average. Also, among all the public accounts, quite a large number of them are run by individuals. These accounts further get into groups such as Yema Finance Group, Hunshui Group and also JMedia.

If we media dates back to 2005 when blog first appeared, then China’s we media would be already ten years old. However, if we media dates back even earlier to personal websites, then twenty years have already passed by 2014(though personal websites in earlier days can never garner millions of views). The development and spread of we media peaked when WeChat’s public account service was launched, which helped foster all kinds of business models.

 2

In fact, WeChat public account service was launched in 2012(more specifically, on August, 23^rd). At that time, only a small amount of organizations and companies opened their trial public account. Moreover, its text editor, to be honest, is quite simple, even “primitive” compared to blog’s. Yet, by the year 2013, an increasing number of people became aware of the huge potential of WeChat public account, regardless of its comparatively humble backend technology.

How come?

For one thing, with the increasing spread of smart phones, nowadays people prefer to use phones instead of PCs while surfing the Internet. Whereas people cannot really speak much within 140 words on Weibo and have to read blogs on PCs, WeChat public account allows for longer texts and also easy access on phones.

For another, WeChat public account is backed up by WeChat Friends Circle, a huge social networking platform. Many news agencies attempt to win more audiences on phones by developing their own apps, but failed because they lacked the support of a social network. I have always had a supposition that mostly users will ignore their public accounts’ updates while only reading those reposted by their friends in friends circle. This supposition is confirmed by Tencent’s public data, saying that around 80% WeChat users read their public account updates through Friends Circle.

Moreover, WeChat users get to share public accounts’ updates not only with their friends but also WeChat groups, so that good posts will go viral among users.

In other words, WeChat enables we media operators to best spread their ideas and thoughts to the public.

3

In 2014, some we media operators began to make great profits through WeChat.

For example, some individually-run public accounts would help companies and businesses promote new products on their own WeChat public accounts and in return, receive quite a good amount of advertising fee.

Other public accounts became so popular that they would make profits out of their subscribers and sell all kinds of products on their accounts. 

A good number of these operators come from media circle and are already quite good at producing favorable posts and spreading them to the public. Their success demonstrates WeChat Open Class’s slogan: any individual can build his own brand if he wills.

No doubt, 2014 was a turning point for some we media operators since they got to make profits via their WeChat public accounts. Compared to the large amount of public accounts operators, these successful operators were in the minority. In another sense, however, they are not at all in the minority since there were already more than 100,000 operators in this minority group and making as little as 100,000 and as much as 10 million RMB annually. Pay attention, I mean an individual operator already could make this much money, not in total.

In fact, WeChat public account has already become a starting point for many entrepreneurs since it is easily accessible and cost-efficient. This may help you understand why some operators got to make profits in 2014 through gradually attracting tens of thousands of subscribers since 2013. 

Yet, according to latest statistics, by the latter half of the year 2014, the huge influence of individually-run WeChat public accounts have begun to ebb away.

The reasons are as follows:

For one thing, WeChat itself issued a “Registration System”, the trademark in WeChat’s ecosystem, and shifted its focus to company-run public accounts. Around the beginning of 2014, WeChat has already closed its registration system for individuals.

For another, individuals may find it hard to adopt WeChat’s large amount of new tools compared to companies and organizations. At present, to run a public account, one has to not only produce favorable posts, manage the backend system, but also develop new technologies so as to attract and maintain its influence. No individual can simultaneously do all these things well and is forced to get into groups.

4

Moreover, the capital market started to eye on the large amount of we media public accounts on WeChat in 2014. 

I myself overheard that there was a public account. I forgot its name, but this particular account was so successful that a well-known venture capital invested more than a million RMB, that is the harsh fact, to its operator, despite the fact that this account was opened only three months ago as a shopping guide account.

However, this is not at all an outlier and such success stories are abundant.

Some we media operators will even turn their public accounts into institutions and companies and seek more commercial opportunities with the money they earned in 2014.

This is the must-trend in 2015:

The minority get to make profits via public accounts, and only a minority of those who made profits will establish companies and institutions, though they are not at all small in quantity.

5

Jiemian, a news website of Shanghai United Media Group recently established JMedia and attracted more than a thousand we media operators to join this huge and comprehensive news and information platform.

To everybody’s amazement, a fight between different groups of we media ensued.

According to a friend of mine in Jiemian, they want to diversify their websites through the collaboration with we media operators and in return, give these operators adequate amount of money.

To be frank, I don’t find this kind of collaboration new at all, since Jiemian is actually doing the same thing as newspapers and magazines solicit manuscripts.

However, I noticed that Shanghai United Media Group once created an “825 Fund” and aimed to invest 1.2 billion RMB to “new media projects, especially in mobile Internet sector”. Up till now, 825 Fund has already invested in 26 programs.

My suggestion is that 825 Fund should pay more attention to these large amount of we media operators in JMedia. It is probable that they will come up with a few initiatives worthy of a try. 

I have always appreciated Zhejiang United Media Group’s idea to develop with the support of capital and Shanghai United Media Group’s slogan “Our media group is also a capital group”. These concepts keep up with the time and fits well today’s media environment. After years of development and evolution, it is high time that venture capital cashed in.

6

During the past decade, we media have evolved from earlier personal websites, blogs to Weibo and WeChat and is going to get into organizations and companies.

This is, indeed, evolution.

（The article is published and edited with authorization from TMTpost columnist @Wei Wuhui, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.)

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.