WeChat Mini Programs, what kind of social ambitions does Zhang Xiaolong have?

A photo Zhang Xiaolong posted on his Moments yesterday brought " WeChat Mini Programs " back into the public eye after a two-month hiatus. Enthusiastic programmers interpreted the infinite possibilities of Mini Programs from a technical perspective, and technology media once again speculated like Conan possessed about the clues that Mini Programs will bring to the ecosystem.

Amid endless excitement, speculation, and anticipation, two schools of thought emerged:

Supporters: "Mini Programs" are actually WeChat's improved support for HTML5 features, opening up more system calls, supporting multi-platform compatibility, and providing a wealth of frameworks, controls, and system call capabilities, including but not limited to: frameworks, views, various basic controls, forms, multimedia support, maps, canvases, WebSocket, data storage, location information, device information (including system information, gravity sensors, compasses, etc.), which can replace at least 80% of Native Apps and are simply a new direction for entrepreneurship .

Opposition: The concept and term of "mini programs" and use-and-go are exactly the same as Baidu's light apps, Ali Life, Java's Applets, light apps in iPhone/iPad's iMessage, etc. The giants have already mentioned them a long time ago. "WeChat mini programs" are just Zhang Xiaolong's cooking. If the BA can't do it well, the T will definitely have no chance.

The two views have their own merits, but I believe that Zhang Xiaolong is not a person who likes to make up stories, and technical discussions cannot predict the future changes of "WeChat Mini Programs".

What kind of changes will the “WeChat Mini Program” bring? Is it just a super web app? Or is it just to save some space on everyone’s phone?

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That's definitely not the case.

In fact, whether it is e-commerce websites such as Taobao and JD.com, content aggregation platforms such as Toutiao and Sohu, or life service websites such as Didi and Meituan , they all face a problem: where do their visitors come from? What are their visitors like?

For content platforms, by setting a sharing button with a URL link at the bottom of the article, they can use traffic analysis tools ( network alliances , QLik, or self-developed components) to roughly depict who has viewed their content and who has downloaded it through these contents.

But in fact, according to a report by RadiumOne: 70% of global content sharing is completed through "unmonitored" channels, 80% of clicks come from information sources in "unmonitored channels", and only 23% are completed on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WeChat.

In other words, the information sources and content diffusion populations monitored by popular domestic content aggregation platforms such as Toutiao and Sohu are actually very small. After WeChat's monthly active users reached 800 million in Q2 2016, the exchange and diffusion of their content and APP downloads by 800 million users on WeChat are like the unknown bottom of an iceberg.

E-commerce platforms that only have external links to product pages are even more confused about the product page sharing behavior of these 800 million users.

But in fact, the content shared and the behaviors of these 800 million users, and even the more than 1 billion users in China, are the key to the disappearance of the demographic dividend and the entry of the Internet into a new normal. All products must focus on upgrading user experience and deepening and refining user groups.

This "huge amount of unmonitored traffic" of more than 70% is called "dark social", which was first proposed by Alexis Madrigal in his column in Atlantic.

The ambition of “WeChat Mini Programs” should and must be here. For Zhang Xiaolong, who created the first generation of Internet super APP, the still silent traffic iceberg under "dark social" is an important weight for WeChat to seize the traffic of the next generation of Internet platforms.

As early as three years ago, Zhang Xiaolong also talked about what WeChat is in an interview with "Business Value": "How you use WeChat determines what WeChat is to you." Perhaps, it can also reflect from the side his feelings about WeChat becoming everything.

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In addition to the exploration of "dark social" by foreign content platforms such as the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, Adidas has also established so-called "Tango Squads" communities on social platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Line. Each community has between 100 and 250 members, and the members are distributed in 15 core cities around the world, mainly active social app users aged 16-19.

This move is also Adidas' exploration of dark social networking. Through specific traffic units of people, it can understand the mainstream consciousness of the target consumer group, and obtain first-hand information from deep social networking that FB and WS platforms cannot monitor (users' photos of how to play with the product, product reviews that have not been released to the public, etc.). Because this information is conducted in private, it is more reliable than shallow social information.

In comparison, "WeChat Mini Programs" are by no means as simple as putting a "link" on the home screen of a mobile phone, and it is much easier for WeChat to form a community aggregation similar to Tango Squads. For e-commerce, content platforms, and life services, "WeChat Mini Programs" have unlimited room for imagination.

For e-commerce: Assuming that you establish your own aggregated external links through the "WeChat Mini Program" e-commerce platform, it will undoubtedly greatly expand the "user sense of smell". By monitoring the behavior of 800 million users sharing a certain product, you can predict the user's future consumption trends, and even the mentality of users of different age groups, as well as their consumption tastes. This may be an important means for e-commerce to break the huge barriers from products to platforms and then to people, which they have always been unable to let go of.

For content platforms: What is even more beneficial to content platforms is that as more traffic is captured, the value of content will be amplified, and the useless efforts that were once passively delivered will become active deliveries to more precise groups of people after the exposure data obtained after users share it twice, three times or even four times will be shared.

Judging from the situation overseas, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC have already realized this value and have implanted corresponding plug-ins in social apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp, and are constantly optimizing content and targeting the right people.

For life services: Taking Didi as an example, by sampling the click-through service mini-programs and users' sharing of the service on WeChat, and integrating keyword controls into the sharing links, it is not difficult to conclude which products users are interested in advertising on Didi, and provide a reference example for Didi's brand cooperation.

What can give Didi an inspiration is that the British professional cycling team TeamSky is also using similar "mini programs" to do the same thing. They integrated the URL shortening service (URL Shortner) and sharing controls developed by RadiumOne into their own content to form a "mini program" that detects keywords and phrases. As long as the audience interacts with the content, it will be recorded. TeamSky, which could not find its own partners, discovered through analysis that music and cars are the topics that its audience is more interested in on dark social channels. This discovery ultimately prompted Jaguar to decide to renew its contract with Team Sky.

So, thinking of the WeChat opening page with a person looking up at the front of a huge moon, what can the "WeChat Mini Program" do? What is its ultimate goal? Perhaps, the "dark social" hidden in the dark side of the moon is Zhang Xiaolong's next goal, and the ultimate purpose of making WeChat everything.

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

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