news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

after three years of rectification,alibaba quietly extended an olive branch to its old rival tencent.

on august 30, the state administration for market regulation announced on its official website that the department would supervise alibaba group holding limited to complete three years of rectification.

the department pointed out that based on the verification and evaluation, alibaba group has completely stopped the "choose one of two" monopoly behavior in accordance with the requirements of the "administrative penalty decision" and "administrative guidance", strictly regulated its own business operations, conscientiously implemented the platform's main responsibilities, and improved the corporate compliance management system. improve the service level for merchants and consumers on the platform. the compliance rectification work has achieved good results, the online retail market environment has improved, the fair competition order has been effectively restored, the market development space has been continuously expanded, the competitive vitality between platforms has been significantly improved, and the quality of platform economic development and the business environment have continued to improve.

ali later responded:for alibaba, this is a new starting point for development.in the future, we will continue to focus on innovation, adhere to compliant operations, increase investment in technology, promote the healthy development of the platform economy, and create more value for society.”

at the same time, alibaba is once again promoting interconnection and interoperability, with taobao special, which focuses on the sinking market, leading the way.

recently, many users have noticed thattaote app now supports wechat payment.when placing an order, you can jump to the wechat payment interface, and then jump back to taote after the payment is completed. the user experience is no different from normal third-party payment services, rather than the awkward and complicated scanning code payment, sending links to ask others to pay on your behalf, etc.

taote customer service staff said that wechat payment capabilities are gradually being opened up; whether users can use this function is subject to the information on the order page.

as the main player in the sinking market of taobao e-commerce, taote was launched in may 2021. it received strong support from alibaba group in the early days and has more than 300 million active consumers annually.

however, due to long-term losses and major changes at the alibaba group level, taobao's development over the past two years has not been ideal, and its popularity has been much lower than in previous years. there are even rumors that "taobao will return to taobao." now, taobao is trying to connect to wechat pay, perhaps hoping to reach the long-tail population outside of alipay by adding payment tools.

but whether this move can produce an immediate effect is not the key;will alibaba take this opportunity to accelerate its opening to tencent, and will tencent reciprocate?more charm and imagination.

the two internet giants had been fighting each other for many years. it was not until the second half of 2021 that they began to move towards each other under the pressure of external public opinion and supervision, and gradually opened up their capabilities and resources to each other.

looking back on this far-reaching "interconnection" today, although alibaba and tencent have had many verbal disputes, they have also made many concessions.

at present, alibaba's vertical services such as ele.me and youku have been connected to wechat pay, and taobao e-commerce is also gradually being opened up; tencent has significantly adjusted wechat's external link policy, allowing users to jump to taobao tmall and other apps by clicking on links, and has opened wechat advertising and marketing services to alibaba.

but,the interconnection between the two giants has not yet been fully achieved.for example, users still cannot directly share taobao and tmall product cards to wechat chats, and the taobao and tmall mini programs have not yet been approved by wechat. correspondingly, most users still cannot use wechat payment on taobao and tmall smoothly.

on the other hand, compared with three years ago, alibaba and tencent now face more long-term challenges. by opening wechat payment for taobao special, a new round of interconnection and interoperability will not only bring new users to taobao special, but also be more likely toachieve a win-win situation and push the two giants to continue moving towards "co-competition".

since 2013, alibaba and tencent have been blocking each other in an escalating confrontation. in particular, the artificial separation of taobao and wechat has resulted in online shopping users being forced to copy and paste taobao passwords that sound like "martian language" and struggle to move around in the ecological cage of the two giants.

it was not until eight years later that the wall between the two camps began to crumble in the face of the trend of breaking monopolies. alibaba and tencent, under tremendous pressure, finally started interconnection.

the change first occurred in the marginal areas of alibaba.alibaba's apps such as ele.me, youku, damai, kaola.com, and shuqi.com have successively connected to wechat pay. at that time, alibaba responded that it hoped to "face the future together with other platforms and move forward in the same direction."

not long after, taobao, alibaba’s “hottest new product” at the time, also took a key step and launched “wechat scan code payment”.

wang hai, vice president of alibaba group, said at the time that taobao launched the wechat qr code payment project in the context of the slow progress of direct connection to wechat payment. "before the interoperability, we first used the qr code payment method to complete the payment.even if this transition only takes a few weeks or days, we hope that the direct connection to wechat pay will not take too long."

however, to this day, taobao has not yet been able to fully integrate with wechat pay.

in 2022, alibaba continued to expand interconnection scenarios. in february of this year, taobao once again opened wechat pay internal testing. when paying on taobao, some users can choose between "wechat scan code to pay" and "go to wechat to ask friends to pay for me". more than half a year later, alipay began to support transferring money to wechat and qq friends by generating and scanning qr codes.

on the other hand, tencent is also slowly opening the door to alibaba. the most eye-catching thing is naturallywechat relaxes controls on e-commerce external links.

as early as september 2021, wechat announced that it would implement new external link management measures in stages and steps. two months later, the shoe finally landed: users will be able to directly access external links in private chat windows; at the same time, in group chat scenarios, the direct access function of e-commerce external links will be piloted.

at the same time, tencent is also trying to open the flow valve.launch advertising and marketing cooperation with alibaba on wechat scenarios.

in the same year that wechat conditionally allowed e-commerce external links, the advertising traffic of tencent video, tencent news, and qq was connected to alimama (ali's merchant marketing platform). taobao merchants can more easily make money from tencent's traffic pool.

after three years of cooperation, the two parties expanded their cooperation in 2023, allowing merchants to place advertisements on wechat video account, moments, mini programs, etc. through alimama, and directly jump to taobao tmall merchant stores, product details pages, taobao live broadcast rooms, etc.

alibaba’s various businesses have launched wechat mini-programs, which have also attracted much attention.

an alibaba executive once said that many businesses applied to open wechat mini programs, but they have not been successful. it was not until october 2022 that the simple "tmall supermarket xiaodangjia" mini program was launched, which gave the outside world a glimpse of the dawn of alibaba's layout of mini programs. more than half a year later, the "tmall premium" mini program was launched before the 618 e-commerce promotion, which further stimulated taobao's imagination of selling goods on wechat.

however, the two mini-programs mentioned above did not continue to operate for a long time and are no longer searchable. alibaba did not use mini-programs to attract wechat users.

in addition, alibaba has not yet fully integrated into wechat pay, and wechat does not allow users to directly share products from taobao to private chats, group chats, etc., which are also the two usage scenarios that users complain about the most.nearly three years after the two giants promoted interconnection, man-made barriers in core scenarios are still prominent.

in the wave of interconnection and connectivity that started in the second half of 2021, external factors are the main driving force for the two giants to move towards each other.the need for both sides to break down barriers and exchange resources was not as urgent as it is today.

at that time, although alibaba was under tremendous pressure from pinduoduo and its leading advantage in user scale was shrinking and even overtaken, the absolute increase in users was not low. in fiscal year 2022 (ending march 31, 2022), alibaba's annual active consumers reached 1.31 billion, with a net increase of 177 million, of which 113 million were in the chinese market.

the rapid growth of taobao special is particularly noteworthy. located in the sinking market where pinduoduo excels, taobao special still achieved more than 240 million annual active consumers 18 months after its launch, with an increase of more than 40 million for three consecutive quarters.

at the same time, alibaba's revenue also maintained a relatively fast growth rate. in fiscal year 2022, alibaba's revenue exceeded 850 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19%.

tencent’s situation at that time was similar to that of alibaba.although a strong challenger stands outside the door, the overall situation is still flourishing.

tencent's biggest rival in 2021 is naturally douyin. after the failure of weishi, tencent faced the risk of missing out on the short video era; fortunately, wechat came up with the video account and promoted it with unprecedented strength. according to the "2021 video account development white paper" by shideng research institute, the video account's dau (daily active users) exceeded 500 million this year, a sharp increase of 79% compared with the previous year.

according to tencent news "first line", as of february 2021, the peak dau of douyin (including the express version and the volcano version) was about 700 million, with an average of 600 million. the gap between the number of active users of video account and douyin is not very large.

as for revenue, tencent games' revenue in 2021 reached 174.3 billion yuan, an increase of 12% over the previous year. considering the special market environment at that time, tencent games' report card was not bad, and flagship mobile games such as "honor of kings", "peace elite" and "pubg mobile" have not yet shown signs of fatigue.

with their main businesses enjoying a good life, alibaba and tencent lacked the motivation to open their arms to their old rivals. but three years later, both giants are facing more challenges;we will once again promote interconnection and seek growth from each other's strengths.the issue is once again on the table for alibaba and tencent.

after alibaba’s e-commerce business emerged from the quagmire of price wars and unilateral “refund only”, it is still in the recovery period and needs to find more growth drivers.

in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (the second quarter of natural year 2024), alibaba group's revenue increased by 4% year-on-year, of which taobao group's revenue decreased by 1% year-on-year; net profit decreased by 27% year-on-year; not in accordance with us generally accepted accounting principles, net profit decreased by 9% year-on-year.

if alibaba wants to return to a faster growth rate, one of the basic actions is to introduce more consumers from outside the ecosystem. taobao has faced considerable pressure in the past period of time. now it is trying to connect to wechat pay, which can theoretically lower the payment threshold and reach those long-tail users who have not installed alipay.if the results are good, alibaba's other businesses - such as taobao and tmall - may follow suit.

on the other hand, tencent's core gaming business has just resumed growth. between 2022 and 2023, the revenue of this business basically stagnated; in the second quarter of this year, tencent's gaming revenue in the domestic and international markets reached rmb 34.6 billion and rmb 13.9 billion, respectively, both up 9% year-on-year, returning to the growth track.

but challenges still exist. in the second quarter, among tencent's three major business segments, only online advertising maintained a double-digit year-on-year growth rate, increasing by 19.5% to 29.9 billion yuan compared with the same period last year, far ahead of the 6% of value-added services and 4% of financial technology and enterprise services.

regarding the financial technology business centered on wechat pay, tencent disclosed in a conference call that the number of payment transactions continued to grow at a double-digit percentage, but the average transaction amount declined. in this case, connecting wechat pay to taobao e-commerce will help tencent acquire more high-value consumers, increase transaction amounts, and thus drive the growth of the entire financial technology sector.

alibaba opened up payment scenarios to tencent on a small scale.internet giants move from competition to cooperationanother footnote.

the new bat - bytedance, alibaba and tencent - once fought fiercely in various fields of the internet and built barriers to try to isolate users. however, as the internal and external environment changed, sticking to the "mountaintop" is no longer feasible, and cooperation between large companies has become more and more intensive.

the most typical one istencent and bytedance’s “century settlement” around games.

five or six years ago, bytedance once made a big move in its gaming business, and its front line even reached tencent. tencent then launched a counterattack around the rights of live-streaming games, and frequently filed infringement lawsuits against douyin anchors for their "pirate broadcasts".

for most of the time after 2018, tencent and bytedance regarded each other as their biggest rivals, and business cooperation such as advertising was basically cut off. however, since 2023, tencent has quietly resumed buying traffic on platforms such as douyin and xigua video to divert traffic to its own games such as "return to the empire" and "naruto"; douyin did not stop tencent's series of actions.

by the beginning of this year, bytedance had largely withdrawn from the gaming sector and no longer posed a direct threat to tencent. in response, tencent basically stopped suing douyin, allowed top tencent game anchors such as zhang daxian to "jump to douyin", and also opened up live broadcast authorizations for games such as "honor of kings" and "game for peace".

judging from the latest financial report, tencent has benefited greatly from this settlement, and douyin has further consolidated its leading position in the game live streaming field and eliminated potential infringement risks.

the interconnection between alibaba and tencent is also increasing.

in january this year, xianyu, a second-hand e-commerce platform under alibaba, launched a wechat applet and supported wechat payment. a month later, many users noticed that taobao began to support wechat payment; taobao responded that it was currently open to some users and some products, and would gradually cover all users in the future.

in march, the topic "wechat can use dingtalk to hold meetings" became a hot search on weibo. users can join dingtalk meetings in wechat without downloading the dingtalk app. now, taobao e-commerce giant taote supports wechat payment on a small scale, which has taken the cooperation between the two giants a small step forward.

the frequent flirting between the three giants reveals a new trend in china's internet:real business interests have replaced long-term competition and become the main consideration for large companies.

in recent years, bytedance, alibaba, tencent and others no longer invest heavily in competing for niche markets, but instead invest more money and resources in their core businesses. even in the face of epoch-making technologies such as ai big models, the focus of the giants is on self-development, while appropriately investing in external entrepreneurs, rather than waving checkbooks to buy star companies.

correspondingly, the new bat has higher and higher requirements for traffic monetization efficiency. take games as an example. bytedance has massively reduced its game business and turned to cooperate with tencent to earn advertising fees. when promoting new games, tencent also puts more budget on douyin rather than its own platform in order to obtain a higher input-output ratio.

today, alibaba and tencent are also facing a similar situation. taobao e-commerce naturally has a need to attract traffic from outside the site, and wechat traffic pool is a must-fight place. tencent needs to find more high-priced monetization scenarios for wechat in addition to advertising, but wechat stores have just been launched and there is still a long way to go before they can grow and develop. selling traffic to alibaba is one of the easiest solutions.

three years ago, alibaba and tencent entered the chess game of interconnection half-voluntarily and half-forced, but made little progress. today, the chess game itself has not changed much, but the two "chess players" have more reasons to take the initiative and seek greater reconciliation and cooperation.