Tencent's Lvpaopao Is WeChat "Going Against Itself"

[[**Tencent launches Green Bubble short dramas to rival Hongguo, but Hongguo is an "anti-WeChat" product, so WeChat making Green Bubble amounts to "going against itself." Hongguo's average daily usage time of 125 minutes surpasses Douyin, while WeChat has only 85 minutes and its share is being eroded. Green Bubble is unlikely to succeed due to genetic contradictions and insufficient resources.**

**Key Points**

**1. Hongguo short dramas are fiercely squeezing WeChat's time**

Hongguo Short Drama's app DAU has reached 168 million, with average daily usage time of 125 minutes surpassing Douyin (120 minutes), while WeChat has only 85 minutes and Video Accounts only 50 minutes. Nomura Securities data shows Hongguo's usage time share rose from 2.2% to 5.9%, while WeChat fell from 19.3% to 18.3%. This shift directly prompted Tencent to enter the fray.

**2. WeChat and short dramas have a fundamental genetic conflict**

WeChat's underlying logic is "saving time," insisting on leaving after use and decentralized weak operations; Hongguo is designed around "killing time," using fully free content, auto-play, coin feedback and other strong retention mechanisms. In operations, Hongguo uses minimum guarantees, revenue sharing, and traffic valves to control the ecosystem, while WeChat relies on product-driven and social recommendations. Sharing short dramas to Moments contradicts users' refined image, and social recommendation efficiency is far lower than algorithms.

**3. Green Bubble is inherently under-resourced and strategically awkward**

The Green Bubble team has only about 10 people and did not receive WeChat's core entry points (requiring manual search or jumping from Video Accounts clips). It started three years later than Hongguo, and its traffic diversion is far weaker than Douyin's support for Hongguo. Short-term data (per-capita time 5 times the industry average, retention 2.5 times) relies on early incentives, but is hard to sustain once volume expands. Even if it achieved half of Hongguo's revenue (about 7.5 billion), that would be only 1% of Tencent's total revenue, while Tencent is fully betting on AI Agent WorkBuddy. Short dramas do not help the AI strategy and divert WeChat resources.

**4. Tencent's decision is based on "unwillingness to concede" rather than strategic deduction**

Pony Ma remains clear-headed about Green Bubble, has not elevated it to a strategic-level product, and has not given it Video Accounts-level resource support. Tencent's hasty response after Hongguo squeezed its user time is essentially attacking the opponent's strengths with its own weaknesses. The short drama market is severely oversupplied (the top 5% of projects take 70% of profits), and Green Bubble is unlikely to become a centralized hit like Hongguo. 2026-10-20 16:20 Tencent making Green Bubble is "going against itself" Letter List Quick View

Hongguo is an "anti-WeChat" product, inside and out, contradicting WeChat everywhere. Now, WeChat wants to make a short drama product benchmarked against Hongguo with similar gameplay, meaning WeChat wants to "go against itself."

The odds of success for a product that "goes against itself" are easy to imagine.

Green Bubble was not born as a product of Tencent following an established strategy, but is closely tied to pressure from ByteDance—Hongguo is simply too fierce.

Launched three years ago, this product reached 168 million DAU on the app side alone in July this year, more than doubling from July last year and exceeding the combined total of the four major long-video platforms iQIYI, Youku, Tencent Video, and Mango TV.

Even more striking is usage time: Hongguo users' average daily usage reaches 125 minutes, exceeding Douyin's 120 minutes. WeChat has only 85 minutes; Video Accounts has only 50 minutes, putting it in the same league as image-and-text-focused Xiaohongshu (42 minutes).

With Douyin's traffic watering it, ByteDance has created another new ace.

So, WeChat is also a super traffic pool and has a large short drama audience—the user scale of various WeChat short drama mini-programs has reached 508 million. Why can't it produce a video ace beyond Video Accounts?

This is a question many people have. Could Pony Ma have asked Zhang Xiaolong too?

Nomura Securities data has deeply stung Tencent.

In August this year, Hongguo's usage time grew 1.8 times year-on-year, ranking fourth across the web, with its share rising from 2.2% to 5.9%, an increase of nearly 4 percentage points. WeChat's share was 18.3%, down 1 percentage point year-on-year, ranking second.

On the key metric of app usage time, WeChat fell one point while Hongguo Short Drama rose nearly four points. Pony probably could not bear to watch.

The pressure on Tencent has once again been transmitted to Zhang Xiaolong and WeChat.

When in doubt, turn to WeChat—this has been Tencent's "golden finger" in recent years. It could even be said that non-gaming products under Tencent can hardly stir up storms or achieve big results without WeChat's support.

But Green Bubble, which focuses on short dramas, probably cannot get such a wish-fulfillment script even with WeChat's backing.

Its fundamental contradiction is: WeChat's basic logic is saving time, while short dramas naturally require extending time. The product genes and growth logic of the two are poles apart.

For Tencent, which will not give up on short dramas, it may as well hear my advice: stop struggling, you cannot build Hongguo.

Hongguo Short Drama's key reason for taking user time from WeChat is that in many respects it runs counter to WeChat, taking "anti-WeChat" to the extreme.

Most strikingly, it is a product designed inside and out around "killing time."

Its threshold is very low—fully free, no opening or ending credits, one-click jump from Douyin clips; at the same time it "retains people" everywhere—vertical full screen maintains immersion, auto-play, timely coin feedback, and so on.

Coupled with the stickiness of short dramas themselves, Hongguo Short Drama has become the hottest time furnace in the ByteDance system.

Yet WeChat has always insisted on "saving time." From instant messaging at the functional layer, to Moments and group chats at the social layer, to WeChat Pay and mini-programs at the functional layer, WeChat has almost never considered how to make users stay a little longer, but has always adhered to the concept of "leave after use."

Even after it later launched Channels, WeChat did not change its underlying emphasis on "saving time." One piece of evidence is that the core entry point for Channels is actually Moments, not the endless feed—it does not deliberately keep users soaking inside for long periods.

Over the past year, Hongguo's share of user time rose while WeChat's fell. This is certainly due to Hongguo's own efforts, but there are also factors in WeChat's underlying design that are unfavorable for competing for time spent.

Operations are also a big problem.

Hongguo inherited Douyin's strong operations approach and manages the content ecosystem through various means.

It uses minimum guarantees and buyouts to decide who supplies short dramas; it uses revenue-sharing rules and incentive policies to decide what types of short dramas are produced; it uses traffic and scheduling to decide which short dramas are seen and which are shelved; and finally, through commercial operations, it decides the revenue scale of short dramas.

These actions are like valves, jointly determining the life or death of a short drama and the team behind it. The platform firmly controls all the valves, thereby shaping the supply structure of the entire content ecosystem.

To accomplish all this, Hongguo must be equipped with a strong operations team and frequently intervene and guide. ByteDance is no stranger to this playbook; it can even be said to be thoroughly proficient at it.

WeChat is exactly the opposite.

Since its birth, WeChat's philosophy has always been product-driven rather than operations-driven. After launching new features, platform operations actions are almost invisible; even for heavyweight products like Channels and Xiaowei, there are no common gimmicks such as "collect coins" or "earn traffic."

WeChat's expectation is that users discover and use new features, and then automatically pass them on to others through social relationships. This kind of weak operations, governing by non-interference, is unique among major internet platforms. The hardest people to find in all of China may be WeChat operations staff.

Finally, look at content distribution.

For short drama platforms using the IAA model, the entire business loop can run only when there are enough users and viewership is large enough. To this end, Hongguo relies almost entirely on algorithmic recommendations.

It does not want users to "choose" content; instead, it "feeds" content to users. The advantage of doing so is that efficiency can be maxed out, matching short dramas to their target audience—older and middle-aged people in third- and fourth-tier cities, aged forty and above; users can also be precisely hit by algorithm-filtered content.

By contrast, WeChat's strength is social recommendation. Contacts, group chats, and Moments are the core paths for content dissemination on the platform. Official accounts and Channels both take this path. This time, with Lüpaopao, WeChat added a "Friends are watching" feature, hoping social relationships would play a role.

But users may not be happy to share short dramas to Moments—this is a lowbrow, even somewhat "hick" form of entertainment, contrary to the refined image most people want to build.

What is more, the efficiency of social recommendation is far inferior to algorithmic recommendation. Its audience coverage is very narrow, and its conversion rate is much lower. Even with WeChat's full support, Channels still cannot match Douyin; if Lüpaopao takes the same path, it will also find it hard to wrestle with Hongguo.

Hongguo and WeChat represent the victories of centralization and decentralization, respectively.

In aspects such as traffic distribution, content supply, resource allocation, rule-making, ownership of relationship chains, and commercial monetization, the two major apps have taken broadly opposite paths.

Centralization allowed Hongguo to rapidly raise efficiency and expand scale. It can push dramas to a massive number of strangers in an instant, with fast scaling and strong certainty of monetization. In only three years, its share of usage time surpassed Kuaishou.

Decentralization allowed WeChat to build the mobile internet ecosystem with the most users and the highest activity in China, and laid the foundation for Tencent to enter the Agent era. But the cost is also obvious: slow scaling in the public domain, weak explosive power, and difficulty in quickly capturing pure entertainment time.

This cost has little impact on mini-programs and Agents—they themselves are also decentralized; but for short dramas, it becomes a mountain blocking the way.

WeChat cannot rewrite its decentralized genes for Lüpaopao, but Lüpaopao must imitate Hongguo and move as close as possible to a centralized way of survival.

But as mentioned earlier, Hongguo is a product that is "anti-WeChat"; if Lüpaopao is to learn from it, it is bound to make many "anti-WeChat" attempts as well.

The first problem to solve is: where does the traffic come from?

The most ideal solution, naturally, is for WeChat to open entry points for it on various pages. But as of now, users need to search manually or jump through Channels clips to find the Lüpaopao mini-program. It cannot be seen in entry points such as the Discover page, Services page, or Channels.

These traffic entry points have been left to products that "save time," such as life services, e-commerce shopping, and transportation.

WeChat's idea may be that Lüpaopao should rely on social relationships to keep fissioning, letting hit content stand out, so that it neither occupies entry points nor fails to gain traffic. In product design, Lüpaopao's "Friends are watching" also carries this implication.

But can social relationship chains really drive short dramas?

It is hard to say. But Hongguo Short Drama has already proven that social spread is not a necessary factor for the success of short dramas.

In addition, at this stage Channels' traffic diversion to Lüpaopao is far lower than Douyin's traffic diversion to Hongguo Short Drama. Coupled with starting three years later and being far inferior to its rival in content reserves and new drama production, Lüpaopao's traffic situation in the initial stage is not optimistic.

As for operations, according to a Huxiu report, the Lüpaopao team currently has only about 10 people, with the focus on polishing product experience and bringing in high-quality content. In other words, it is not yet staffed for strong operations.

In fact, even over a longer period, the Lüpaopao team will not be very large—WeChat itself is a small team, and Lüpaopao, as a sub-module, can only be smaller.

Of course, WeChat has also taken quite a few actions to support Lüpaopao.

Tencent's first two forays into short dramas were both led by Tencent Video; this time, WeChat itself is stepping in, with operations handled by the WeChat Short Drama Content Center.

On the incentive policy front, WeChat has stipulated that before the end of this year, high-quality new dramas brought in through co-distribution via Lüpaopao that reach an average per-user watch time of 10 minutes within 7 days of release can enjoy a 100% revenue incentive for 7 consecutive days.

In addition, WeChat recently launched an incentive campaign for micro-short dramas adapted from official account novels, distributed via the Lüpaopao short drama mini-program and the Channels native short drama.

With the help of these moves, Lüpaopao's early data performance has been quite good. Official figures say that Lüpaopao's average per-user watch time is about 5 times the industry average, and its retention rate is more than 2.5 times the industry average.

In addition, the AI-simulated live-action short drama "Film Queen Yaya" surpassed hundreds of millions of views within 3 days of launch, reaching more than 10 million users combined across the mini-program and Channels.

But as Lüpaopao's scale gradually expands, whether it can continue to maintain such exaggerated performance is hard to say.

WeChat seems not to intend to build Lüpaopao up quickly. A Huxiu report says the Lüpaopao team has not set aggressive short-term KPIs for daily active users, watch time, or revenue.

In other words, at least at this stage, Lüpaopao is not seeking to become a giant like Hongguo Short Drama. Behind this, there may also be cautious consideration of how well WeChat and short dramas fit together. Before the problem is thought through, keeping Lüpaopao in a phase of small steps and quick sprints may better match expectations inside and outside Tencent.

Tencent doing Lüpaopao is a typical case of attacking the opponent's strength with one's own weakness.

Douyin has also stepped in this pit before: it always envied WeChat's social networking and wanted to use its short-video advantage for a "dimensional strike" into Tencent's heartland. As a result, Duoshan went through four or five years of ups and downs, repositioned multiple times, never gained traction, and finally ended up merged into Douyin.

Now, Tencent faces a similar problem—if Zhang Yiming's obsession is social networking, then Ma Huateng's obsession is short dramas.

Financially, short dramas are rather chicken-rib to Tencent.

Earlier this year, reports said Hongguo Short Drama's 2025 revenue exceeded 15 billion yuan. By comparison, Tencent's total revenue for fiscal 2025 exceeded 750 billion yuan. Even if Lüpaopao reached half of Hongguo Short Drama, that would amount to only 1% of the entire group's revenue.

More importantly, Tencent is pushing hard into AI, especially the office Agent WorkBuddy. Developing the short drama business offers little help for AI, yet requires squeezing WeChat's resources and traffic.

The main reason Tencent sent WeChat into the fray is that Hongguo has squeezed Tencent-affiliated users' watch time too hard. Any company making decisions based on "unwillingness to accept it" will look somewhat hasty.

Another question is: does the market really need more short drama platforms?

The short drama industry's problem is severe oversupply. A large number of short dramas are made and nobody watches them, and only a tiny fraction get viewers; short dramas that can steadily attract advertising are even fewer, only the top few dozen at the very top, with the top 5% of projects taking 70% of industry profits.

This is the problem Hongguo Short Drama faces, and even more a problem Lüpaopao must solve.

At present, Hongguo Short Drama can still rely on its strong market position and Douyin's continuous traffic funneling to alleviate the problem and get a slice of the cake. But Lüpaopao cannot do this. Tencent and WeChat's strengths, such as capital, traffic, and social networking, are not miracle cures.

What's more, the resource allocation Hongguo enjoys within ByteDance is something Lüpaopao cannot possibly enjoy.

English text is being prepared.

For Tencent, which has many business lines, letting a small team inside WeChat build a short drama platform does not require much investment, so it might as well give it a try. But it must absolutely not get carried away; there is no need to pour precious resources into it just to settle scores with Hongguo.

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