7 days after the mini program was launched, Luo Pang ran away with 10 million users...

Before January 9, Zhang Xiaolong’s several rounds of “exposure” to mini programs whetted everyone’s appetite, but just a week later, we saw some shocking news. Luoji Siwei, which has over 10 million users, has withdrawn...

As early as the launch of the mini program, we wrote in " WeChat mini program , what is your scenario? 》 discussed that the launch of mini programs is more about paving the way for future offline exploration: to attract more users with shorter service paths and more usage scenarios. The only difference is that this time, WeChat as the platform and the merchants have switched positions.

Even after the mini program was launched, many teams approached outsourcing masters to develop the mini program, but our CEO Ade politely advised them not to do so.

Back to the retreat of Luoji Siwei, the previous questions have answers.

On the one hand, this is a dispute between the Apple Store and the WeChat platform. Before the Apple Store adjusted its rules last year, developers could get 70% of the profits. Of course, it was not completely 70%, as the 2% transaction tax was also inevitable. According to statistics, the Apple Store earned a total sales of US$8-9 billion in 2016. Apple is naturally unwilling to give up such a revenue scale to WeChat.

On the other hand, WeChat also pointed out the above problem at the beginning of the release of the mini program. "Functions such as games , live broadcasts and virtual items have not yet been opened." This move is to avoid competition with Apple's paid download and in-app purchase models.

Toutiao lite is also one of the earliest mini-programs to go online. On the evening of January 15, some netizens discovered that the lite mini-program version of Toutiao had been suspended. As of press time, the editor found that this version of Toutiao has been resumed. The specific reason for the suspension has not yet been disclosed by the authorities. Even so, some users have reported that the "castrated version" of Toutiao, which has lost its core algorithm advantages, only has two options: "recommendation" and "video", and cannot search. The experience is really bad, so they abandon it.

When it comes to making trouble, the fastest people are still the media people. On the day when the mini program was released, Boca announced a list. Among the top 100 mini programs released that day, 21 were in the rich media category.

Data source: BOKA Select List

The ones who are happy with this wave of "cannon fodder" are the media that rely on 10w+ for food, but who is suffering? It’s the product manager and developer. I’ve read the design documents carefully and applied for development resources from my boss. Click! After working on the project for a long time, it was cancelled because it had no prospects. It’s almost the New Year, who can be happy?

But at the same time, another voice is very firm: Meituan ’s colleagues are working day and night to fix the bugs in their mini program, optimize functions, and print the mini program’s QR code on all Meituan’s promotional pages.

In fact, whether it is the "national total time" proposed by Luoji Siwei or the slogan of "connecting everything" shouted by the mini program, keywords such as "scenario", "offline", and "user time" are what product managers and entrepreneurs need to think about and practice in the new year. This article will talk to you about what the Calm Down Mini Program wants to do?

What is a scene? WeChat itself has become a scene

Judging from the definition alone, the entire process of "what kind of user role" producing "what kind of behavior" in "what kind of environment" can be called a scenario. Another important feature of a high-value scenario is that users will enter it frequently. Open your phone and take a look. Apart from system services, which app takes up the most usage time and consumes the most power? The majority of them are undoubtedly WeChat, and we also see an astonishing figure from the official data report : half of WeChat users use WeChat for up to 1.5 hours a day.

Data source: 2016 WeChat data report

If WeChat can take up 1-2 hours of your time every day, besides chatting, sending red envelopes, and checking the Moments, why can't it allow you to do more things in it and take up more of your time? From the perspective of making money, whether it is a mini-program QR code or various function entrances, WeChat is trying to attract more merchants and companies to "work" for it, and become an oligarch in the monopoly market.

The key word is offline. WeChat doesn’t want you to do traffic business.

Some people say, editor, are you trying to cause trouble by saying WeChat is so scary? In fact, if you want to know what the mini program is for, you have to understand that WeChat does not want you to do traffic business. The one that suffers the most in this regard is probably the public account "Zhi Xiao Cheng Xu" that iFanr had planned long in advance. It originally wanted to rely on the mini program store to grab the traffic dividend, but because the mini program itself does not support long-press QR code recognition, and even scanning after saving is not possible, it now seems to have become "useless".

Application distribution, App pre-installation, ranking manipulation, search bidding, and other traffic businesses cannot be carried out on the current mini-programs. This approach is easy to understand. So far, WeChat has not made any major improvements in the sorting optimization of the Moments information flow and subscription accounts , probably to preserve the user experience.

Why did you become cannon fodder? The shortest service path is not captured

Let’s talk about offline again. Why did we say at the beginning that many media failed to seize the “bonus” and instead became “cannon fodder”? Because the mini program said that I am not here to solve the current "traffic anxiety" and "entry crisis" of everyone. I am here to serve offline. Its essence is that "online user time has been divided up by super apps, and you can get some user time from offline scenarios." On the third day after the mini program was launched, WeChat officially tweeted a guide to offline scenario applications. To sum up, there are the following scenarios:

• Bus + Mini Program: Know when the bus is coming.
• Aviation+ Mini Program: reminds you that your flight has arrived, is delayed, or it’s time to board.
• Travel + Mini Programs: itineraries, hotels...all the trivialities of going home and traveling are stored in WeChat.
• Entertainment + Mini Programs: Scan the QR code in KTV to order songs, call a designated driver after singing, and return home safely.
• Express delivery + mini program: call the courier with one click and check where your package is.
• Weather + Mini Program: The weather is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and the key is to check the smog.
• Health+ Mini Program: End the “nightmare” of waiting in line for three hours when you are sick and seeing a doctor for five minutes.
• Driving + Mini Program: If you don’t want to get out of the car to refuel or charge, just use one code to do it.
• Safety+ Mini Program: Scan the QR code to ask the traffic police for help and feel more secure.

Image source: WeChat offline scenario application guide

From the above 9 scenarios, we can extract two characteristics: "sharing users' time from offline scenarios" and "shortening the path for users to use services". For example, in the scenario of buying travel tickets, your time is originally occupied by queuing and the tedious ticket purchasing process. In scenarios such as train stations or airports, would you be more willing to scan the code to complete related services? For example, if I am sick and waiting in line at the hospital, if there is a mini program that I can scan and then display content related to my illness for me to browse, then I don’t need to open the browser or download Dingxiang Doctor. This type of mini program can be said to both share the user’s time and solve the problem.

After the mini program went online, many apps began to move their existing products to the mini program in full swing. The outcome of this approach is likely to be that they will do well and die quickly. Take e-commerce O2O products as an example. The express delivery industry is so developed that even pancakes can be delivered to your door. Users' usage habits have become to browse the required services online and then enjoy them offline. Things like scanning to order food or scanning to get a number are of no use at all in this scenario. Some people want to make a merchant map for physical shopping malls, where users can scan offline to choose merchants to dine at. But in fact, the stores in the mall already have a fairly complete online entrance (price, ratings), and users go straight to the merchants and have no use for your service at all.

Social media is a high-frequency and high-stickiness scenario, but it is always easy to be overlooked

The community is actually a high-value scenario with high frequency of use and strong user stickiness. If you look at your recent conversation list on the first screen of your WeChat, you will find that it is definitely dominated by group chats. There are many cases of mini programs that cut in from this perspective. Chan, CEO of the Possible Academy, mentioned many such cases in an offline sharing session at PMCAFF. He said: "The first one is Tencent Voting. The function is very simple. After entering the mini program, you can post a few votes and throw them directly into the group. The first screenshot seen in the group is the current vote. If you share it again after an hour, you will see the voting result at that time. It solves the pain point that group owners find it difficult to find the focus of the chat and are easily distracted by information such as red envelopes. I think this is a product that makes good use of the community scenario."

"The second scenario is that I finalize the schedule with the personal trainer through the Chaoxi Calendar. Every time I make an appointment with him using Chaoxi Calendar, I will send it to him through WeChat chat. He only needs to click in once and click accept, and the schedule will be recorded. Gradually, he will arrange the schedules of other students of his own in Chaoxi Calendar." A Chan said.

Tencent cannot give you a perfect "Internet", WeChat is a local area network

After the mini program caused a huge stir in just one week, it was also met with a lot of doubts, and many of them even escalated to criticism of the Tencent platform. Media person Fang Xingdong reposted an article on WeChat titled "Ma Huateng's Anxiety and Layout: This is a More Important Battlefield Than WeChat" and commented: Any platform that does not grant full autonomy to third parties and users is a pseudo-platform, and the so-called openness is pseudo-openness, and it is impossible to trigger real global explosive power. This is what mini programs are like. They have not escaped the psychological demons of Ma Huateng and Zhang Xiaolong’s closed empire. Rather than criticizing mini programs, I would rather say that I am looking forward to and anxious about the openness of the Tencent empire.

In fact, WeChat has long been criticized by users for being too closed and suppressing competitors. There are naturally similar reasons for the unsuccessful internationalization process. During the internal testing of the mini program, a technical person wrote an article calling for "the essence of the Web is Open and Decentralized, which is the original intention of the World Wide Web (WWW)."

There is nothing wrong with the interests of commercial oligopoly, but we often have to think about whether our products would be better if there were fewer restrictions and more openness.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @PMCAFF compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!