After working for 10 years, I finally realized it.

If you don’t have that fate, don’t be so twisted!

Friends, imagine: you worked hard to run a cafe, but found that the coffee you made was unattended, so you finally had to post a notice at the door: "I recommend everyone to go to Starbucks next door." Isn’t this the current situation of Xiaohongshu?

In the past two days, Alibaba’s Taobao Tmall and Xiaohongshu have cooperated in depth to launch the “Red Cat Plan”. Simply put, it is to add the "advertising chain" function below the Xiaohongshu notes, and the content of the pilot brand on Xiaohongshu can be directly redirected to Taobao and Tmall.

Some netizens exclaimed: "Tsk tsk tsk tsk, Alibaba is really 6, it's so open, even Xiaohongshu has been picked up!"

Wait, let me laugh for a while... Where is this? It is obvious that Xiaohongshu cannot play in e-commerce, so he has to go and hold on to Taobao!

You know, just a few years ago, a screenshot of Taobao was deleted in seconds after posting on Xiaohongshu. Who would have thought that Xiaohongshu notes would actually take the initiative to attract Taobao today?

But now, it has had too much contact with the Mother of Success and finally understood the meaning of "those who know the times are heroes"!

Obsession

In fact, Xiaohongshu is very powerful - it has more than 300 million monthly active users and more than 100 million daily active users. It is the only content social platform with deep grass planting genes. It has been imitated by major platforms, but has never been surpassed.

But its obsession with e-commerce has been bumpy all the way, like a drama with ups and downs.

In 2014, the first version of Xiaohongshu App was launched, and its functions are limited to overseas shopping and sharing communities.

In early 2015, Xiaohongshu took the first step of "e-commerce" - self-operated bonded warehouses were put into use, self-operated cross-border e-commerce was launched, and the "welfth club" was launched in the same year.

In 2016, the ambitious Xiaohongshu introduced more brands and third-party merchants, and even invited a group of big-name journalists to visit Japan to visit the proud brand supply chain.

But the good times did not last long. In 2016 and 2017, various problems occurred in Xiaohongshu e-commerce, and doubts such as supply and quality broke out. The problems were too many to be bald, and the e-commerce business gradually weakened.

In 2018, Alibaba invested in Xiaohongshu and started preliminary cooperation. But Xiaohongshu's e-commerce mind is still alive. In 2020, it will spend money and effort to create a new concept of "content + live broadcast + e-commerce".

In 2021, Xiaohongshu stubbornly strengthened its e-commerce genes and closed the external link permissions for product links in notes (including Taobao links).

In 2023, Xiaohongshu finally made a move, closing its self-operated e-commerce platforms "Little Oasis" and "Welfare Society", and turning to community e-commerce with buyers as the core. Betting on live e-commerce has become popular for a while with anchors such as Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui.

But the hot wind quickly cooled down. Xiaohongshu had to turn its focus to store broadcast last year and began to lay off its e-commerce department in July last year.

Until now, the "Red Cat Plan" has finally been implemented. After 10 years of hard work, Xiaohongshu still got married with Taobao!

Receive your fate

In fact, this time Xiaohongshu accepted his fate, and he broke out from the "e-commerce obsession" and no longer had to endure hardship. After all, not everyone can do the hard work, dirty work and tiring work of e-commerce.

Many times, enduring hardships leads to a confusion in your heart.

In July last year, Conan, COO of Xiaohongshu, had already redefined Xiaohongshu e-commerce as "lifestyle e-commerce". Behind this statement is actually the strategy of giving up the head-on competition with platforms such as Douyin, and not expecting large and comprehensive e-commerce, turning to "small but beautiful", and even selling water directly to make money.

In 2024, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce GMV is less than 100 billion, which sounds like a lot, but Kuaishou has approached 1.4 trillion yuan, and Douyin has reached 3.5 trillion yuan! It's like holding a toy water gun and trying to compare the amount of water spray with a fire truck. The difference is too big!

According to the old people in the industry, the root cause lies in the positioning of Xiaohongshu's "encyclopedia reference book". It is too deeply rooted in people's hearts and ensures high stickiness and loyalty of users. But at the same time, it also brings a difficult knot that cannot be balanced with "high B-shaped grass planting of content" and "changes caused by e-commerce", so the action is distorted.

"For example, the e-commerce department thought that buyers were important at first, but later thought that the merchants' feelings should not be ignored. Too many grass-planting advertisements were too hard, and they were afraid of affecting the quality of content, etc., which was because they failed to find a balance between community attributes and commercialization, which led to long-term twists in the strategy." An insider explained this.

Anyway, I was suffering from all kinds of "necessary, want, and want, and want" and couldn't find a way out.

Therefore, in December 2024, Xiaohongshu announced its direction for 2025, including "ecology towards greater openness." Now I will translate it: I am too tiring to do e-commerce by myself, so it’s better to earn commissions for Taobao’s traffic diversion!

This decision proved to be very wise. After layoffs and adjustments to e-commerce strategies, Xiaohongshu's profits rose sharply.

That’s right, e-commerce has endless suffering, and it’s the shore to plant grass. The money you earn is real money, and it is the right way to go public quickly.

No longer stumbling and constantly struggling, Xiaohongshu finally realized: if you don’t have the fate of e-commerce, don’t be so twisted. What I did last time was Kuaishou! Anyone who understands it understands it!

Sometimes, giving up is also a victory, isn’t it?

[Editor in charge: Huang Mengyu PT136]