To date, WeChat has close to 600 million monthly active users, making it the most popular app for every smartphone user, and everyone says that WeChat is a great product. Now WeChat, as a platform product, integrates many rich modules and tools that can bring different functions and experiences to users, and has become the most important entrance to the mobile Internet for Tencent. At the same time, WeChat as a product has been integrated into our lives and gradually influenced our lifestyles. So, how is such a product made, and what kind of product concepts are implied behind it? After reading a few online articles about WeChat's product development history, I'll try to sort it out here.
One, 1.0 era, mobile IM as a starting point
According to the product and developer involved in the development of WeChat, WeChat was initially nothing more than Tencent's Guangzhou R & D center (mainly responsible for Tencent's QQ mailbox product), probably no more than ten people in the team with a "try" attitude to experiment with it. It was the second half of 2010, in the eve of the outbreak of mobile Internet, when the ios and android platforms as a new platform developers are also quite small. October, an application called kik messenger released, leading directly to the 2011 thousands of kik-like applications were developed, which included the later big hit whatapp, m chat, line, kacao, and more.
The explosion of kik messenger is due to its extreme simplicity and cross-platform nature. It is an app that was born for mobile, and it built its own relationship chain based on the cell phone address book in a very short period of time with almost no effort, which is impossible to do for a lot of SNS apps in the web 2.0 era. Within a short time, it started a revolution with the momentum of sweeping everything, and the first to bear the brunt of the operators in various countries. This cross-platform cross-border cell phone communication tool, which can realize text and picture messaging communication in different cell phone terminals, kills the experience of SMS and MMS, and its experience is so extreme that it even made the cell phone giant at that time -- BlackBerry -- to block it on its own cell phone platform.
When kik first came out, Zhang Xiaolong, the boss of the Guangzhou R&D center and QQ mailbox R&D team, foresaw its explosion. Xiaolong sent an email to Ma Huateng at the time to talk about it, and applied for the Guangzhou R&D team to make a similar app out of it. Ma Huateng has also realized that QQ with 10 years of history is not the most needed mobile IM in this era, and a more suitable IM for cell phone use scenarios is needed, not only by users, but also by Tencent. He praised this and named the application WeChat, modeled after Weibo.
Originally, WeChat was defined as a notification tool, with three main functions:
1. It notifies you when a contact sends you a message;
2. It notifies you when there's a new entry in your QQ mailbox or QQ offline messages;
3. It notifies you when you receive a private message on Tencent's Weibo account.
That's it.
Guangyan's small team spent less than four months completing the development of WeChat ios version 1.0, which was officially released on January 21, 2011. version 1.0 has a very simple interface and very simple features, including text-to-text instant messaging, photo sharing, and replacing the user's avatar in three areas, but cross-platform exchanges, a fast and lightweight floor-based dialog, and convenient photo sharing features have brought users a lot of benefits. However, the cross-platform communication, extremely fast and light floor-style conversation and convenient photo sharing functions bring users a very good experience. The first time Ma Huateng used it, he commented that "the experience is very good", but many other colleagues within Tencent were not optimistic about this simple and even a bit crude cell phone application.
Second, 2.0 and 3.0 began, the development of mobile social networking
"WeChat's success, in addition to the team's efforts, the timing of me is also very important."
In March, two versions were issued one after another, but the user data still didn't look up.
Soon, we sent the fourth version in early April, this version of WeChat's four tab position was determined, the initial four tabs are: WeChat, contacts, find friends and settings. Among them, find friends this tab can be seen at the time of WeChat's urgency, where the system through the address book contacts, qq friends, qq mailbox contacts and even enterprise domain name mailbox contacts and so on a variety of relationship chain to give you recommended friends, with a view to be able to accumulate in a very short period of time to the user.
However, the user data is still not getting any better.
At this point, the explosion of another application drew the attention of WeChat's product team: talkbox, a voice messaging application with a logic similar to that of kik, but the voice is undoubtedly the biggest highlight. Similarly, Tencent's QQ has been doing this for a long time, but it's been slow to catch on, but when it's been put on cell phones, it's instantly captured a huge number of users.
On the other hand, the smartphone at this time began to tell the popularity, especially the release of the iphone4, with the momentum of the revolution swept the entire cell phone market. Zhang Xiaolong judgment at this time: smart phones and pc is completely different, based on the smart phone platform features and personal computer is also completely different. It is at this time, WeChat R & D team began to realize that to try to tap the various possibilities of the smartphone platform, and constantly try to make use of the phone's natural ability to make the mechanism of simple and natural applications. In other words, until this time, the WeChat R&D team began to feel the pulse of the mobile Internet applications, and took the lead in grasping the essence of the mobile Internet.
So, with more than a month's effort from the WeChat R&D team, WeChat's 2.0 voice version was finally released at the beginning of May '11 (this is the official first version, and all previous versions were added to beta). WeChat also released an important way to increase users in version 2.5 - Nearby People. Finding people nearby makes it easy for users to find other people around them who are using WeChat. It was also this feature that gave the outside world its first taste of the power of WeChat's capabilities.
At that time, users felt pretty much the same way about WeChat, MiChat, and even talkbox, and everyone was talking about who was copying who in these three apps, and then MiChat did the graffiti feature, and their colleagues published an article in Zhihu, saying that they were waiting for WeChat to copy them.
WeChat responded with version 2.5 in early August, and besides the video feature that kept me up all night, the biggest surprise of that version was the people nearby. You could say that the voice version laid the foundation for WeChat, but what really made the outside world feel the power of WeChat was the Nearby feature.
In this way, WeChat began to quickly lose ground to all of its competitors. By October, WeChat released version 3.0, which included the Shake and Drift Bottle features, and since then, WeChat's position has seemed unassailable.
The two functions of shake and drift bottle are equivalent to adding the function of socializing with strangers to WeChat, which is a communication tool based on acquaintance relationship, and adding a new way of making friends based on the mobile Internet, which makes the product have the characteristics of interesting and fun, increases the user interaction, and maintains the stickiness of the users.
Three, 4.0 began the platform
May 2012, WeChat released version 4.0, the version of the main updates include two aspects: the new circle of friends and the development of API interfaces. The first is the Circle of Friends, which is actually a social network (SNS) based on image sharing. It tries to let every user participate in their own and other people's "picture shaping life" design intention, the circle of friends is to attract familiar with the interaction between friends as a selling point, through the UGC between friends and frequent interaction to increase user activity, to maintain the viscosity of the product. We can also see from the following story WeChat team in the development of the Circle of Friends scenario:
The entire development process of the Circle of Friends took 4 months, invested no more than ten manpower, but in this short period of 4 months, the team completed the complete development of more than 30 versions of the development of iterative, we image of the development process is called the development process back to the development of the process, every morning, the development team through the email Every morning, the development team receives the next version of the product manager to organize the function points to start the development, in the evening, the function is delivered to Xiaolong and the product manager, they discuss and analyze the current version in the evening, and then in the middle of the night to give new ideas and even directions, the product manager in the morning when the idea of the refinement of the function points into one by one to send an email to the development. And so on and so forth.
When the team decided to release the circle of friends, I think we have reached the limit, because at that time there are still bugs have not been solved, Xiaolong said: bugs are also a kind of culture, so it was released.
Also, Circle of Friends can be said to be a creative invention of the WeChat R&D team led by Zhang Xiaolong, and its experience has a lot of details that reflect its product sentiment. Unlike social networking sites such as Facebook, Weibo, and blogs (space), the design of WeChat's Circle of Friends continues WeChat's two-way friend relationship. As we all know after using it, we can only view each other's comments if we are friends with each other. This design makes the mutual interpersonal relationship not spread to the second degree relationship, both effective protection of the user's privacy, and highlights the WeChat this product in other social products characteristics.
There's also the fact that the first version of Circle of Friends didn't support text-only messages, and I didn't know how to send text-only messages when I first started using Circle of Friends until I searched the search engines to find out how to send text-only messages by long-pressing the camera button. The feature is designed to be obscure because the WeChat product team has positioned the Circle of Friends as a social networking platform for acquaintances based on picture sharing.
Zhang Xiaolong said, "In retrospect, WeChat's circle of friends was originally not allowed to send text, or not encouraged to send text. Not only is the fear of flooding, here is a basic assumption, to a person to write a paragraph of words is far more difficult than he sends a picture, for an ordinary user, you let him write a paragraph a day out, and this paragraph must be seen by other people, he also has to write well, in fact, it is very difficult. I want our product to be something that everyone can use, and then, pictures are the best medium, pictures that everyone will post."
Some people on the product team later suggested that the possibility of users posting plain text in the circle of friends could not be denied, so the feature of long-pressing the camera button to send plain text was added later as an internal test, and although it was designed to be very subtle, the feature was still discovered by users. But until now with the latest version, the first time you open WeChat to send plain text to the circle of friends dynamic, you will still get the reminders that let you use with caution, and may cancel the function of sending plain text in the future.
The second major new feature in version 4.0 of WeChat is the opening of the API interface, which will allow WeChat to support sharing of music, news, food, photography, and other content from third-party apps to friends in WeChat's address book to further increase interaction between users, and will potentially make WeChat a powerful mobile app platform in the future.
We are also working on a new platform that will allow users to share their music, news, food, photography, and other messages with their friends.
In July 2012, the WeChat public platform began internal testing, making WeChat a platform that has truly evolved from a successful product, and in this way starting the process of WeChat's commercialization. The WeChat public number uses a subscribe-push model, as a feature of the product, which was originally designed as follows:
So, all you see in WeChat is the information of your friends, how to see more rich content? This brings us back to the proposition of reading. The solution given this time is the WeChat public number.
Four, 5.0 began, the upgrade of the WeChat platform
August 9, 2013 WeChat released its 5.0 version. In this version, the WeChat team upgraded WeChat's public platform, which is divided into subscription and service numbers. The subscription number provides users with information and advice, offers a new way for media and individuals to disseminate information, and also addresses the need for users to read long articles on WeChat. The service number is designed to provide users with services, and enterprises can customize the menu and gain access to advanced interfaces such as payment, thus providing enterprises and organizations with more powerful business service capabilities and user management capabilities. In order to avoid too much subscription number information on the user to produce interference, WeChat product team also respectively on the two types of public number to do special provisions and design, such as respectively stipulated the number of messages sent per day, and especially on the subscription number of messages to do the design of the folding.
WeChat 5.0 also adds an Emoji Store, Sweep, Game Center, WeChat Pay, and more (as well as a useful Favorites feature). The first is the Emoji Store, where users can choose from a wide variety of emojis to meet their visual communication needs. Second is the Sweep function, where you can scan barcodes, book and CD covers, street scenes, and also translate English words. Sweeping barcode, sweeping book and CD cover become the entrance for users to view and buy products, and sweeping street scene, which increases the fun of the product. The third is the game center, where you can play games with your friends. Airplane, an ordinary game, is spreading like a virus on the first day of its launch thanks to the existence of a friends' leaderboard.
The game was the first commercialization project, and by far the most successful one. 2013's Airplane Battle fired the first shot of WeChat's commercialization.
Initially, Xiaolong only intended to make a tank battle animation as the start page of 5.0, but then I deserted the game engine, and by the way, I made a demo of the airplane battle. after Xiaolong looked at it, he thought it was good, and asked us to try to make it more complete and more interesting, so I pulled a small team to start to do it, and we fought for more than a week, almost every day. We fought for more than a week, almost every day, overnight rhythm made four different versions, art, sound effects, gameplay after intense PK quickly changed over and over again. We even did commercialization planning.
The stability of Airplane Battle is very critical, because every user who starts WeChat will first play this small game, if there is a problem, all the users will not be able to enter WeChat, at that time, my leadership even said to me, if there is a problem with the stability of the game, you can roll the cover and go away.
After a month of hard work by my buddies, I ended up getting good results from Airplane Wars. That year, I went home, listening to the constant "chirp chirp chirp chirp" sound of gunfire on the way home, but it was still quite enjoyable.
If the game of Airplane Battle is the first shot of WeChat's commercialization, then the "WeChat Pay" function, which first appeared in this version, is the official opening of the door to WeChat's commercialization. By binding a bank card, you can make one-click payments in public numbers, QR codes, and apps, which satisfies users' need for fast, convenient and safe mobile payments. The emergence of this payment method makes it clear that WeChat's game platform can be utilized to pay for game downloads, share in mobile shopping, and purchase paid emojis, among other ways of earning money.
In 2014, on the eve of the Spring Festival, WeChat 5.2 was released, and WeChat's "New Year's Red Packet" campaign was launched, which became more and more intense with the arrival of the Spring Festival holiday. Users in the WeChat group crazy grab red envelopes, not only is a social product success, behind is the outbreak of WeChat payment. Many users bound their savings cards in WeChat Pay in order to grab red envelopes and send them out, creating a crescendo of user growth for WeChat Pay. A Spring Festival passed, WeChat Pay may win geometric growth of new users in a very short time.
This is an extremely successful product operation, and the explosion of WeChat Pay has allowed WeChat to quickly steal a large chunk of the "mobile Internet payment" market from Alipay. In addition, WeChat Pay also provides users and merchants with a variety of different mobile payment scenarios, such as realizing card payment, code payment, public payment, APP payment, and providing new marketing tools such as enterprise red packets, vouchers, and discount offers.
V. WeChat ecosystem, connecting everything
As of now, the latest version of WeChat has reached 6.2.5. WeChat has gradually slowed down its iterative updating since the release of its 6.0 version on October 14, 2014, and the 6.2 version of WeChat launched in May this year includes WeChat, WeChat Sports, and an open platform for emoticons. Movement as well as expression open platform. WeChat movement is a formal test of the WeChat hardware platform, while the expression open platform is WeChat as a component of the WeChat open platform.
Zhang Xiaolong, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of the WeChat business group, emphasized, "We hope to build an ecosystem based on WeChat, but not every piece inside the ecosystem by ourselves, to put it simply, we want to build a forest, not to build a palace of our own, we want to cultivate an environment that will let all the plants and animals to grow out freely inside the forest, rather than us building it out."
WeChat's official open ecosystem already involves businesses such as WeChat Pay, the hardware open platform, the public platform and the enterprise number, etc. WeChat is evolving from a tool for human communication into an ecosystem connecting people, hardware and services, and bringing about the extension of the human body, the improvement of productivity and the convenience of daily life by "connecting everything". The company's newest product is a new product that will be used in the next few years to improve the quality of life.
From the official launch of WeChat on January 21, 2011, WeChat has become a large network that connects everyone to everyone else. The WeChat client makes geographic distance no longer an obstacle to human communication through basic service functions such as voice calls, shake, nearby people, small videos, and sharing in the circle of friends.
Meanwhile, the launch of public subscription numbers has allowed even the smallest individuals to have their own brands. The emergence of a large number of self-media makes the production, distribution and consumption of general information free from the shackles of traditional printing technology and the PC Internet, and significantly improves efficiency.
WeChat Hardware Platform is WeChat's IOT solution for connecting things to people and things to things, following WeChat's efforts to connect people to people and businesses/services to people. Through the WeChat hardware platform, WeChat further tries to connect people, devices and services together, so that the user's experience is no longer confined to the then and now. The interconnection with smart hardware such as bracelets, TVs and air conditioners, as well as the access to offline services such as dropshipping and Dianping, have made WeChat penetrate into every aspect of people's daily lives like water and electricity. "Connecting everything" is becoming a reality.
On November 18, 2013, Tencent WeChat held its first "WeChat-Public" partner communication meeting in Guangzhou. At the meeting, WeChat put forward the concept of "platformization, publicization, and self-service", indicating that WeChat's open system has initially formed a framework. So far, WeChat's open platforms include WeChat Public Platform, WeChat Game Platform, WeChat Hardware Open Platform, and WeChat Emoji Open Platform. In addition, WeChat integrates a large number of offline service interfaces, making WeChat an important traffic entrance to the mobile Internet with WeChat Pay as the fulcrum. Now in the WeChat wallet, we can swipe the card transfer, cell phone recharge, through the Wealth Management pass to buy financial services, but also to the credit card repayment, through the WeChat public welfare convenient to participate in public welfare; you can buy a movie ticket, you can through the entrance of the Jingdong and beauty of the entrance to shopping, but also through the entrance of the drop trip taxi, through the entrance of the Ctrip travel to buy airplanes and train tickets, but also through the entrance of the public Dianping Get all kinds of life services; in addition, you can also pay water, electricity, coal, broadband and fixed-line telephone fees through the service of life payment, through the module of the city services to obtain medical, traffic control, industry and commerce, justice and other public **** services ...... WeChat an application connects with a variety of services related to people's lives, has allowed us to see what the "WeChat, a way of life".