微信生态圈创新的“长尾”征途

This case describes the WeChat business ecosystem along two dimensions: One is to see the WeChat ecosystem as part of the Tencent ecosystem to examine external relationships of the WeChat ecosystem. The other focuses on WeChat's partners within its own ecosystem, aiming to examine internal relationships of the WeChat ecosystem. The WeChat ecosystem has maintained a certain degree of permeability, enabling internal and external exchanges of capabilities, resources, and value. At the same time, it has also maintained a certain degree of closure to manifest its independence and uniqueness while providing a better environment for partners to grow in it. Externally, WeChat was born in response to Tencent’s mission of "openness" and "sharing" to avoid the widely criticized monopoly in the QQ era and the damage caused by it. Obviously, the WeChat ecosystem is part of the Tencent ecosystem. Therefore, the two ecosystems can empower each other and grow together. Internally, on the strength of product design, capacity opening, resources input, and rule-making, WeChat offers ideal positions for key companies, users, distribution channels, suppliers, and even competitors in its ecosystem, so it can guide the orderly flow of capital, information, and traffic in the new value net, and achieve self-sufficiency, mutuality, and symbiosis through value delivery and benefit exchange. As the C-end traffic growth hit a bottleneck, WeChat started implementing the B2B strategy in its ecosystem in 2017. But it fell into the same old trap again: traffic was moving toward market leaders. Challenges remained: How to keep balance when the entire ecosystem may continue to grow and innovate?