Tencent 2020 Global Digital Ecology Conference shows a complete picture of industrial Internet, with its open posture, diversified scenes and rapid vertical penetration, which are different from the past.

Even areas such as digitalization of manufacturing industry and coordination with service industry, which were difficult to be directly involved in the past, began to show deep layout. A Tencent image with 2B temperament stands out. If you only look at the scene, Tencent 2B seems to be completely inferior to Alibaba Group.

But a detail reveals a different taste. At the conference, Tencent was full of the words "intermediate platform, brain, collaboration, 2B base", and in the educational scene, it also jumped out of the "operating system".

This is one of the characteristics of Tencent dialect since 20 19. This is very "Ali flavor" hehe.

Not just Tencent. In recent months, the words "Dazhong Taiwan" and "operating system" have been frequently used in JD.COM. JD.com, in particular, has spared no effort and even shouted "global marketing". More small and medium-sized peers and even traditional enterprises are constantly copying and explaining.

Here comes the question:

1. What signal does the expression of homogenization reflect?

Second, did Tencent's collective speech style disintegrate Ali's discourse system?

As far as homogeneous expression is concerned, a single signal reflects an overall development trend. That is, the whole industry and even society are experiencing a profound digital transformation.

This has become common sense. It is reflected that enterprises, especially industry giants, have collectively experienced systematic and structural changes. At least include: the openness of data and technology dimensions; Digitization, building blocks and agility of product and business dimensions; Scene and ecological remodeling; Organizational dimension collaboration, etc. In this way, they have the ability to export, empower and build a new ecology.

The second signal is related to the epidemic situation and the policies and guidelines of the authorities. The epidemic has brought shocks to many industries, further promoted, activated and stimulated various digital opportunities, and the digitalization process at the whole social level has also fully awakened.

Under the guidance of the government's "digital new infrastructure" policy, the giants began to reposition themselves and comprehensively promote their strategies from the dimensions of data, technology, value chain, platform, ecology and organization.

Another important signal is also related to the capital market. It is conducive to raising the stock price and raising the future valuation.

Amazon is the most typical in this respect. In fact, as early as 1999, it defined itself as a "technology company" and an enabling industry, not an "e-commerce enterprise". In 2003, the prototype of AWS was conceived and became an army in 2006. After a curve of 10 years, it has now become the core of its revenue and profit. Amazon's market value once topped the global championship. Since Nadella 20 14 took over, Microsoft has undergone a digital, systematic and structured transformation, successfully becoming the global core player of cloud computing, and its market value has also reached the top.

Ali, which started from B2B, and then went to C2C, B2C, C2B and even S2B2C, has always been a classic bilateral or even multilateral platform, and its services to B-side and C-side are inseparable. It has already realized the value of 2B service.

I will analyze it later, and only mention two nodes here: First, Ali has been intensively talking about data and industry services since 2007. Ceng Ming regarded it as the most important meeting in Ali's development history, that is, the group strategy meeting (Ningbo) at the end of September 2007 was understood as "building an open, collaborative and prosperous e-commerce ecosystem", which included two cores: "Moon Plan" and open API. The former runs through the underlying data such as information flow, capital flow and logistics, and opens up all subsidiary businesses. "Flying to the Moon" is the crazy carrier of Wang Jian and Alibaba Cloud. The opening of API is expected to create "an unprecedented economic miracle, that is, an ecosystem".

The other node is the annual report of fiscal year 20 15, which is the first annual financial report after listing in the United States, and independently discloses Alibaba Cloud's income. At that time, the strategy of "large, medium and small front desk" had not been announced. This is a signal that Ali Group accelerates the upgrading, optimization and transformation of its growth model, and it is also a signal that domestic technology giants show new growth drivers in the digital economy era. In fiscal year 2020, Alibaba Cloud's smart revenue exceeded 40 billion, increasing by 3 1 times in six years. In fiscal year 20021,Q 1 surpassed1200 million again, and it has exceeded 100 billion for three consecutive quarters.

Not long ago, Goldman Sachs raised Alibaba Cloud's smart valuation by $93 billion, more than 20% higher than the $77 billion offered by Morgan Stanley two months ago. This data also means that Alibaba Cloud Intelligence will be expected to become independent further, even in the capital market in the next few years. This will be a new behemoth.

Tencent's 2B service is also very early. At the beginning of his business, Ma also took the 2B road, but for a long time, social activities and entertainment focused more on the C side. Even so, we don't agree with Wu Jun's argument that "Tencent lacks 2B gene". In fact, if the enterprise value chain and supply chain are combined, it can be said that there has never been a pure 2C enterprise. The same is true for Yu. However, as far as Tencent's clear organization and strategic advancement are concerned, the organizational structure of 2065438+2008 930 has changed, and CSIG was born, which is a key node in Tencent's development history. Since then, Tencent has also closely linked CSIG with the capital market. In the past two years, every time Tencent's 2C business was questioned and faced with a major test, it conveyed its key strategy of growth and market value management.

The 2020 Tencent Global Ecological Conference also coincides with the suppression of Tencent's market value. In the past few years, it has been following Ali. But it was opened by Ali some time ago. It has improved slightly recently, but there is still a market value gap of more than 800 billion. Among them, in addition to the excitement brought by Ant Group's expected IPO, Ali's biggest impression should be related to the valuation of 2B territory.

At this moment, Tencent certainly has the intention to stimulate the stock price and market value. In the recent trading day, Tencent's Hong Kong stocks did have a clear reaction, and the global ecological conference should have played a role. At present, CSIG has no independent valuation and lacks more independent observation perspectives. The pressure may not lie in the specific business itself, but more in the complex internal organizational system, involving structural changes. It is nested in Tencent market and reaches a further independent node.

JD.COM's homogeneous expression shows an increasingly independent style. Although the field of public cloud is not brilliant, JD.com, which is based on e-commerce, has reached the meeting stage in the science and technology innovation board, and more independent units such as JD.com Logistics and JD Health are also being realized. In the past three years, JD.COM has experienced at least three rounds of industrial adjustment and implemented intensive organizational changes. An open, scientific and intelligent image of JD.COM ·2B keeps emerging. In the past few months, the market value of JD.COM has been greatly improved, and its growth, investment value and potential valuation will certainly have a good performance.

Then, will Tencent's collective writing style disintegrate Ali's discourse system?

Furthermore, will there be a new pattern change in their game with Ali and even overseas giants?

The distance is too far to judge, and hard judgment is meaningless. But as far as the current and medium-term evolution is concerned, I still try to give my own conclusions.

Tencent 2020 Global Eco-Congress has indeed demonstrated its complete and diverse capabilities in terms of specific 2B elements, various intermediate platforms, dazzling landing scenes, and especially manufacturing industries that were difficult to penetrate in the past.

Its open attitude and border awareness are also very clear. In addition to various plans and scenarios, it has not forgotten the core position of "digital assistant", being an assistant, being a partner and helping not to add chaos.

In fact, two major problems have been clarified: one is to break the so-called "Tencent has no 2B gene theory" by Wu Jun and others, and the other is a series of actions, which also shows Tencent's vigorous promotion of the so-called middle wall culture.

Because, many solutions, brains, intermediate platforms, operating systems, and scene penetration cannot really land without a higher level of internal collaborative innovation. Judging from many cases and data presented at the meeting, it does have obvious effects.

In particular, the complete modular services defined by retail, education, finance, intelligent transportation, manufacturing and 2C capabilities make people see the thinking of an industry intelligent operation system.

As we said just now, Tencent must be undergoing systematic and structural changes. At least in the aspects of data and technology, digitalization/modularization/agility of products and services, scene and ecological remodeling, organization and coordination, there has been obvious evolution. Otherwise, exporting, empowering and building a new ecology may stay at the marketing level.

However, the homogeneous business vocabulary also shows that Tencent has not yet developed a more independent and unified discourse system, at least in terms of business ideas, defining the future and leading innovation in the 2B industry, which shows that there are still many obstacles to its collaborative innovation, and many systematic and structural changes still remain at the marketing level. In other words, the difficulty lies not in data, technology and productization, but in the long-term service practice and the organizational structure that matches it at present.

We are by no means mocking Tencent for copying Ali's words. On the contrary, if we sort out the evolution of Tencent over the years, we will find that Tencent is not inferior to Ali in terms of business ideas and vocabulary expression, and even once led.

For example, as early as 20 13, Tencent was defined as an "economy" by the outside world. At least before 20 18, it also defined "brain". The word "operating system" has more say.

Tencent's "operating system" is real and virtual. The "real" part is easy to solve. As early as 13 years ago, some people said that QQ was an "operating system". It takes a long time and implies the integration space of commercial services. This has been followed by WeChat ecological thinking.

Then Tencent set foot in the mobile phone OS. After the 20 10 diagnostic meeting, the ecological open logic collided with the product, and the business concept was ahead of schedule.

10 years ago today, Tencent launched WebQQ2.0. WebOS is not new, but the local WebQQ and IM are aggregated and have the same magic as iOS. Q-service integrates all kinds of mobile applications of Tencent, and has become the convention of mobile desktop platform.

Then Qplus is even more inspiring. Ma Hua Teng said that the parties are no longer important. Tencent's "client" has a deeper connotation than "platform" and a broader extension than "operating system", which leads to the emergence of today's distributed architecture thinking and "commercial operating system". However, at that time, no matter data, technology, business, supply chain, external infrastructure, and of course consumer demand, they did not have the basis for landing practice.

But this can't hide the new thinking value of Tencent's "operating system". 20 17 and 20 18, the outside world began to discuss the "wechat operating system theory". Logic doesn't seem to have completely shaken off the shadow of Q-service and Qplus. Wechat is certainly a subversive innovation. However, without the exploration of QQ, especially the "operating system" thinking of that year, it would be difficult for WeChat to be born. The failure of similar external products such as Netease, Xiaomi and Ali is not accidental. They lack the continuity of Tencent's business behavior.

Of course, there was also the 2B practice of TencentOS, and today there was a wonderful opening continuation.

But in our opinion, Tencent's "operating system" thinking is better than the "real" part. Never completely beyond the independent product form. Tencent has a strong link power and the ability to reach various fragmented and diversified scenes based on social interaction, but it also lacks many in-depth cultivation mechanisms, so it is not as good as the external vertical business service platform in terms of business collaboration dimensions involving external upstream and downstream value chains.

This is precisely the excellent side of Ali's "commercial operating system". Ali's "operating system view" certainly has an independent product concept, and Tian Fei and YunOS are the products of this thinking. Although there are obvious differences in the scope of services, it is almost as deep as Tencent's "operating system view" in essence. There is also omnipotent Taobao, which once gave people the impression of "operating system" by relying on its strong service integration ability. In addition, the "Hundred Rivers Plan" announced by Ali on 20 15 and then stranded actually has the forward-looking thinking of the operating system.

But also on 20 18, Ali Group's "operating system view" made a qualitative leap, expanding from "real" product perspective to "virtual" business perspective.

The birth of "commercial operating system" indicates that Ali Group has reached the following new stage at the following levels:

1, front-end service diversity, data dimension integrity: e-commerce new retail, finance, local life, health, entertainment, etc. And began to fully open up, the concept of data banking and consumer operating assets landed.

2. Integrity of the value chain: In addition to the entrance, there are complete elements such as digital payment, intelligent logistics and Alibaba Cloud. In addition, the C2B mechanism is being further strengthened.

3. Forward-looking business philosophy and strategic drive: economy, "five new" strategy, one Ali, etc.

4. High frequency of organizational change and super synergy. It has promoted the comprehensive penetration of the above-mentioned vertical and horizontal elements.

A 100 plan, one of the landing strategies of commercial operating system, contains 1 1 element. They are actually the result of the above changes. Ali's ability, after 20 years of precipitation, has been fully integrated in data, technology, business and organization, and fully decoupled on the basis of super coupling.

Looking back at the strategic meeting of Alibaba Group (Ningbo) at the end of September 2007, it almost completely matched the requirements of the "Moon Plan" and the open API, and reached an ideal business form in the industry so far.

Tencent of 20 18, why can't it move from the "operating system view" of product form to the "operating system view" of big business form?

Wu Jun said it lacked 2B gene. This is a confusing false proposition. Not to mention the 2B positioning when Tencent was founded, and the subsequent WeChat Eco-2B service, only entertainment. Tencent has long been connected with many B-end institutions, and it is also a classic bilateral and multilateral platform economy. How is it possible without 2B gene?

If Tencent proposes a "mutual entertainment operating system" in the field of mutual entertainment, at least at home, no one has its complete elements and industrial chain penetration ability.

However, in addition to the entire mutual entertainment map, if compared with the above-mentioned vertical and horizontal elements of Ali, we can also find that Tencent's ecosystem has obvious shortcomings:

1, data short board

There are many advantages in social mechanism, user scale, pure "big data" scale, fragmented scene service access, payment tools, etc., but in the physical e-commerce and new retail, manufacturing, supply chain, performance and other related landing links, the shortcomings are obvious. In addition, although Alibaba Entertainment is weaker than Tencent as a whole, the data dimension matching is complete. In addition, there are more independent business services.

2. Vertical service short board

Tencent wins in the diversity of links, the richness of scenes and the profundity of insight, but it is weak in the ability of in-depth service except in the field of mutual entertainment. It does connect many partners through socialization and investment, giving each other the so-called "half-life". However, this kind of cooperation has been positioned as "making the world have no difficult business" from the moment it was founded, and it lacks a lot of ability in eliminating commercial barriers and complicated operation methods.

Of course, it is not that Tencent will not help people do business. Tencent's main business entertainment is also a business, which can resolve the barriers faced by many B-side partners and precipitate a set of capabilities. This kind of business also has its complicated and powerful side. It will not be easier than the e-commerce field. But it pays more attention to the cultural field. In real life, the whole value chain lacks many offline links involved in tangible goods. Many scenarios and chain services are incomplete, and it is impossible for deep data to be effectively connected. As far as the supply of Tencent platform is concerned, although it is relatively complete today and has begun to build a complete system with the help of small programs and micro-stores, it is still based on the synergy of external network effects and has more fragility.

It used to be said that Baidu personnel are good at technical research, Tencent has a strong product manager, and Arit knows how to operate. There are many exaggerations, but Alibaba Group's business practice in the past 20 years, at least in many fields related to tangible goods and manufacturing, is more capable of operation and practice than Tencent.

This ability is still difficult to see in public cloud services, but in the combination of cloud and data intelligence, Ali will have an advantage in many scenarios.

3. Transformation and synergistic efficiency

Based on the above two dimensions, Tencent's services have obvious shortcomings in quality, efficiency and super synergy in many scenarios other than mutual entertainment.

Therefore, Tencent emphasizes the connection and cooperation at the social, payment and capital levels. Many companies it invests in are also its key partners. However, no matter how to emphasize the status of "half-life", it will never really solve the challenge of coordination.

There is another weight. For some time, some people have been particularly keen to use the advantages of user duration to promote the platform. This is usually related to social, entertainment, live broadcast/long and short videos. This is the advantage of Tencent.

Some time ago, Ali was controversial, although in addition to entertainment, there are excellent service forms such as Taobao live broadcast to expand time.

However, regarding the competition for users' time, many platforms are also stretched. With the shrinking of user incremental space, traffic economy has entered a bottleneck. This kind of platform urgently needs to produce more efficient and better trading attributes. The latter is precisely Ali's advantage. When other platforms are trapped in "retention and transaction transformation", Ali still shows strong growth potential under new service forms such as Taobao live broadcast.

Although the scale of external single platform users exceeds or approaches Ali, it still shows the effectiveness of Ali Group with GMV exceeding 1 trillion USD.

This is why I want to emphasize both "transformation" and "synergy" here.

For example, focusing on the whole chain of services, although Tencent has also participated in the synergy between manufacturing and service industries, from the perspective of group size, companies like Total have more room to choose Ali than Tencent. After all, they should not only touch users, occupy minds and build brands, but also promote transactions stably, sustainably and safely.

4. Internal organizational strength

This is just a superficial feeling. Since 20 18, the outside world once questioned Tencent's internal organizational system. Later, the organizational structure changed, and CSIG was born, and then a technical committee was set up to promote the openness, enjoyment and coordination of the bottom. It should be said that Tencent 2020 Global Ecology Conference announced so many "middle stations" and so many scenes landed, all of which had the effect of previous organizational changes.

However, there is also an ambiguity: at such an important occasion and critical moment, after Tang Daosheng discussed the efficiency, security and ecological construction of Tencent's industrial Internet and re-established the position of "digital assistant", the structure of Tencent Group 2B base is still not clear enough. We have seen products, intermediate platforms and scenarios, and there seems to be a lot of room for collaboration at the behind-the-scenes organizational level, especially in technical research, WeChat ecology and data of various units.

At a roundtable forum, Tang Daosheng said that Tencent's current three core tasks are insight, product strength and organizational strength. Quark thinks he has spoken his mind.

In this way, we can give a relatively clear conclusion on the topic of "whose operating system is better".

We say that with the evolution of the platform, although Tencent 2B service can involve more scenarios than dedicated connection, and public cloud services will even grab more shares, it is difficult to produce the same empowerment effect in data intelligence related to the industry, especially in areas such as the combination of manufacturing and service industries, even if there are 1 1 elements similar to Ali. The "business operating system" of Ali economy will be more efficient.

But Ali also has no proud capital. Because these two platform economies, at least on the stage of China, represent two different development paths of digital economy.

Ali's whole system is efficient, but it lacks greater openness and connectivity in a single dimension. It relies on the whole complete economic system to fight. Anyone who wants to challenge the platform of this system and fight hand-to-hand with it will pay a huge price and it will be difficult to succeed. However, if Ali is dismantled, apart from the dimensions of e-commerce, cloud intelligence and financial technology, it is difficult to say that every portal service has real control. Ali is indeed constantly making up every link and element. The bottom layer has its strong technical strength, but what is better than the system is the super synergy inside and outside and the strong organizational strength. The biggest challenge is to integrate with the initial heart, culture and values.

Compared with Ali, Tencent with strong connectivity has a broader vision. Under the position of "digital assistant", there will be more opportunities to infiltrate. Its elements are also becoming complete, its ability is also showing a structured and systematic style, and its internal and external coordination and organizational strength will continue to improve, but it is impossible to move towards Ali's model in many years to come. Otherwise, its ecosystem will collapse today.

To some extent, Ali of 2B is more like an apple, semi-closed, full of quality and efficiency; 2B Tencent, more like Android, is rough and full of open vitality. They all have strong systematic and open characteristics, but when they regard the corner of competition as the outside, their real enemy is themselves. Ali and Tencent, in terms of mode and path, are actually a group of highly matched CPS.

We can see that at the 2020 Tencent Global Ecology Conference, the keynote speaker was jean tirole, winner of the 20 14 Nobel Prize in Economics. He has read the classic paper Bilateral Market: Overview, which he cooperated with Jean-Charles Rochet 15 years ago, and he fully understands why he appeared on the stage of Tencent at this moment. Over the years, the discussion around the bilateral platform mechanism and supervision in this paper implies the future evolution space of Tencent and Ali. Tencent has stronger connectivity and openness, so it has a more independent posture. In jean tirole's speech, there are indeed different judgments.

Logically, Tencent in the future may make Ali suffer a lot.

However, everything still needs to return to the actual business level.