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Wen/Wang Wang
Source: Silicon Rabbit Race (ID: sv_race)
Facebook is worried. It is being abandoned.
According to the latest data from Appfigures, the downloads of Facebook and Facebook Lite have decreased by 23% in the past 12 months.Of course, Facebook has remained at home for many years. Even though its market share has shrunk, as of April this year, there are still about 11 million downloads.
This is not the first time Facebook has felt abandoned.About seven or eight years ago, Facebook experienced a "defection" of young users: because more and more middle-aged and elderly users poured into the platform, which was considered "not cool enough" by young people, it turned to younger platforms such as Instagram and Tumblr.For many years since then, Facebook has been trying to catch up with young people.At the beginning, it was "whoever is popular will receive". Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp is still controversial today;Later, "whoever is popular will copy" was derived, and a large number of products that are almost accurate reproduction were launched.
In those days, the school shouldered the responsibility, but now the middle-aged sewing monster
We are most familiar with the story of Facebook and Snapchat.After its attempt to acquire Snapchat was rejected in 2012, Facebook directly copied Snapchat's Stories function and transplanted it to all its main products, including Instagram Stories, WhatsApp Status, Facebook Stories and Messenger Day (later Messenger Day was merged with Facebook Stories).Although the media continue to crusade against this blatant plagiarism, Facebook has made great efforts to do miracles by this action, shouldering the threat of Snapchat, retaining young users and reaping real money.
When Snapchat became less popular in the market, Facebook focused on a new popular app: TikTok.This time, Facebook also adopted a two pronged strategy.In August 2018, Instagram officially announced the launch of Reels, a new function that allows users to shoot, upload and browse short videos.This function undoubtedly points directly at TikTok, which leads TikTok to officially tweet Instagram and leave an embarrassing message saying, "Well... it looks familiar".
Instagram official announced Reels, TikTok forwarding source: Twitter
A few months later, Facebook also released the independent app Lasso, which is similar to TikTok in terms of functions and playing methods.However, Lasso has kept a low profile since its birth and was only announced online by the product manager on its social networking page.Since then, despite the support of Facebook, it has mainly focused on the US and Central and South American markets, with a slow pace of promotion and a volume far from being able to compete with TikTok.In July 2020, 2-year-old Lasso died and was officially closed.Time has changed, and Facebook failed to capture Snapchat's success.
Nowadays, it is hard for us to remember which original innovative products Facebook has released in recent years.For example, soon after the outbreak of the epidemic, Zoom took the opportunity to take off, and Facebook immediately launched Messenger Rooms, hoping to share in the video conference field;Recently, Clubhouse emerged as a new force. Facebook not only developed Live Audio Rooms, but also stitched together two of the most popular software Clubhouse and TikTok, releasing the short audio platform Soundbits.There are also Neighborhoods benchmarking Nextdoor, Facebook Gaming benchmarking Twitter, and new products benchmarking Substack.In short, Facebook today is like a middle-aged man trying to keep up with the hot spots after 2005, trying to imitate the moves of young people with all his strength, but the sky is not as good as people would like, just no taste inside.
From copy to China to copy from China
Facebook is not the only big company in Silicon Valley that is busy "copying" and "borrowing". It is only conspicuous because of its frequent and straightforward copying.Looking at the product catalogs of major Silicon Valley companies in recent years, we can always find some less original figures.
At the same time, we see more and more Chinese science and technology companies emerging on the international stage as creative origins.In addition to the ubiquitous TikTok replicas, there are also e-commerce platforms such as "American Pinduoduo", bike sharing of "American Little Yellow Car", and chat software such as "American WeChat", not to mention the new models that companies try quietly, such as small programs, live broadcast e-commerce, red envelope social networking.
So someone excitedly said that the era of copy from China has come.
It is a long-term pain for Chinese technology companies that they have been unable to shake off the label of "copycat".The concept of "copy from China" naturally inspired many people's self-confidence.
In 2017, Robin Li made a direct statement at Baidu's summer annual meeting that "the world is changing from copy to China to copy from China".He mentioned that Baidu's feed streaming business developed rapidly in those years. "It is said that a search engine on the other side of the ocean began to do feed streaming a few days ago".After the words, the scene cheered and thundered.Considering the subtle relationship between Baidu and the search engine on the other side of the ocean, "copy from China" is more proud of "the Chinese people have stood up since then".
As early as 2012, Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, met Robin Li and the founder of Renren, deeply shocked by China's "strong culture of cloning things quickly", and urged other executives to understand the spirit and speed up product development.After this email was exposed in 2020, compared with Facebook, which has no taboo about cloning culture, it is even more sour and sweet.
The source of Zuckerberg's email to some executives: Hu Xiu
Evolution of "copy from China"
From "Chinese version of Google/Twitter/eBay" to "American version of WeChat/Alipay/Pinduoduo", we can see that copy from China is not a false proposition. We do see a series of technology companies exporting Chinese wisdom.This includes not only the technological creation of Chinese enterprises, but also commercial breakthroughs.
More than a decade ago, Chinese enterprises were onlookers in the international market. For various reasons, they were unable to compete with hard power and had no bargaining chips.At that time, the success of copy to China was usually to take advantage of the information gap between China and the United States to enjoy the dividends of the rapid growth of China's closed market.
Later, the relatively independent Chinese market has formed a technological ecology different from that of Silicon Valley. Some fields have taken the lead in Silicon Valley, such as mobile payment, which was once talked about with relish.At this stage, due to the huge size, rapid growth and unique environment of the Chinese market, overseas technology companies, investors and the media paid attention to it.Chinese enterprises have become the observed.At this stage, some foreign enterprises have followed the old path that Chinese enterprises have followed, that is, to use the information gap to localize high-quality products or functions to fill the gap in the local market and take the lead.However, Chinese enterprises may not be able to exert their efforts because they have not had time/plan to expand overseas markets, or encounter acclimatization when going overseas.
Today, Chinese enterprises represented by TikTok show a broader vision and become players in the international market.Musical.ly has been focused on the overseas market since the acquisition of Musical.ly by byte beating. After all, Musical.ly was an unknown niche app in China at that time, but it has attracted a large number of young people in Europe and the United States.After the acquisition, Byte Beat built TikTok with Musical.ly's appeal accumulated in the European and American markets, echoing the domestic dithering, and creating a worldwide short video trend.At this time, it is not easy for Facebook and other companies to cut off the hooves again.
Maybe looking back many years later, TikTok marks a new stage of copy from China, that is, Chinese enterprises carry out innovation and creation from a global perspective.
Epilogue
From not being able to play at the poker table, to being discovered by the "bright eyes", to actively planning the game, Chinese technology companies have gradually become confident, and the mentality of participating in the game has also changed.But this is just the side where the sun shines.Even today, the event of copy to China still happens from time to time. The latest group carnival may be the Clubhouse craze at the beginning of the year. At that time, several voice chat room APPs appeared almost overnight.
It's proud to get rid of the label of "copycat", but we still can't be blinded by the deviation of survivors from several big companies who successfully went to sea.When you win a phased victory, you should still look around yourself.
Comparing the unicorn enterprises in China and the United States, we can find that China's unicorns are mostly distributed in e-commerce, mobile communications, hardware equipment, artificial intelligence and automobile transportation industries, while the United States unicorns are mostly distributed in Internet software&services, financial technology, mass health, e-commerce&direct marketing and artificial intelligence.
Chinese unicorn enterprises have stronger Internet traffic attributes, which are mostly seen in industries that can quickly cash in with the help of demographic dividends, and enterprises that have been "copied" also belong to this category.In contrast, there are more unicorn enterprises doing research and development of underlying technologies in the United States. Although these companies are not as famous as TikTok and other consumer products, they are the basis for the future explosion of upper level applications and the key to technology leadership.These technologies are not easy to copy. Once you master them, you can easily jam others' necks.
Chinese enterprises start late and have a thin foundation, so it is very valuable to get to the status today.However, we still need to search for a long way to go.
