Guangzhou New Product Launch: DingTalk, Alibaba's Social Dream Rekindled?

Guangzhou New Product Launch: DingTalk, Alibaba's Social Dream Rekindled?

As the saying goes, "You can't force love, but you can find it by accident." No one expected that WeChat, which had repeatedly triumphed in the social platform arena, would be challenged in the vertical social space.

Let's rewind to 2014.

In January 2014, initiated by Alibaba's Laiwang product team, DingTalk was launched with a focus on improving office and collaboration efficiency for Chinese enterprises. In December 2014, DingTalk released its 1.0.0 beta version.

On August 27, 2019, at the Future Organization Conference, DingTalk CEO Chen Hang announced: "Enterprise organization users have exceeded 10 million, individual users have surpassed 200 million, and on-site developers have exceeded 200,000." DingTalk has surpassed WeChat in the enterprise office domain, becoming a leader in China's mobile collaborative office sector.

So, setting aside the commercial value of the smart office market, what does DingTalk really mean to Alibaba?

In my view, it not only signifies Alibaba's successful entry into the social field, but also builds user stickiness through the rigid application scenarios of office work. Additionally, it has gained access to data from tens of millions of enterprises, as well as payment scenarios extending from office use.

Even in terms of social interaction alone, using DingTalk for eight hours of work chat is enough to chip away at the social pie under Tencent's ecosystem.

Rekindling the 'Social Dream'?

One of the key characteristics of the social industry is that once a leading advantage is established, it becomes extremely difficult for latecomers to catch up.

Why? Because the switching cost for users is too high!

This is why, when Laiwang became more and more like WeChat, despite having nearly identical features, there was no need for users to switch to another 'WeChat'.

However, with DingTalk officially integrated into Alibaba Cloud, and the advent of the 5G era, new changes may occur.

Previously, DingTalk's goal was to achieve five 'online' states: organizational online, communication online, collaboration online, business online, and ecosystem online. Entering 2020, with the goals of 'killing itself' and 'breaking down barriers', DingTalk is likely to extend beyond office scenarios, building a moat in To B while penetrating WeChat's To C scenarios.

DingTalk, rekindling its 'social dream', has already shown such ambition.