Is APP dead? Is mini program promotion coming?

On January 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's first iPhone at the Mosconi Convention Center in San Francisco. The release of the first generation of Apple brought with it the popularity of a new term: Application, or APP for short. During these 10 years, APP has grown from a newborn baby to a behemoth that occupies most of people's time, and now to the scene that APP is "everywhere". Along with it comes various APP uninstalls. Traffic has basically been occupied by the top 20% of APP. The vast majority of companies that make APP can no longer survive by APP.

At this time, someone asked if there could be a tool that could store these apps so that they could be easily searched without downloading. No one dared to imagine it at that time. As one of the giants of the Internet company, Baidu was once full of imagination in this area, but later on, for some reason, it gave up.

And on January 9, 2017, exactly 10 years later, a lonely boy with his "green baby" announced the end of the era of this APP. He is Zhang Xiaolong and his WeChat . At 00:00 on January 9, the mini program finally unveiled its mystery. Many Internet people stayed up all night just to be the first to experience this little toy. The first batch of mini programs totaled 125, including Internet giants such as JD.com, Tencent Video, Tongcheng, Didi, and Toutiao.

However, this article will not elaborate on the functions, forms, future prospects, and which apps have already been launched of WeChat Mini Programs . I believe that everyone has been completely overwhelmed by today's Mini Programs. Today we will talk about what changes the emergence of mini programs will bring to us operators . Of course, what many people are most concerned about is whether the APP will be replaced, especially the Android APP. Due to the flourishing of Android models, many programmers also look down on the idea of ​​developing Android versions of the APP. So when the mini program comes out, will the APP be replaced? Let me tell you what I think.

1. The emergence of mini programs will have a fatal impact on operators responsible for promotion and operation

We all know that from website promotion in the PC era to APP promotion in the mobile smart era, I believe everyone can experience it firsthand.

In the portal website era, computers were the main entry point for users to access external information. At that time, as long as you knew a little bit of technology, built a website, and promoted your website, you could get a lot of traffic and monetize that traffic. So the webmaster was the website promoter of that era. In many companies, there are also many positions such as website operation, maintenance and promotion, which are about making some operational measures around the website to acquire users.

In the era of mobile Internet , people's eyes have shifted from large screens to small screens, namely mobile phones. People download various apps to get the information they want. We are surrounded by various apps for news, social needs, shopping, games , etc. APP has therefore become an essential tool for enterprises. Is there anyone who doesn’t start a business to make apps? Who said that APP does not need promotion and operation?

Therefore, the position of APP promotion and operation became popular for a while, the number of people engaged in this profession also increased day by day, and various APP websites, WeChat public accounts and other platforms came in like the Yangtze River.

After nearly 10 years of development, APP can basically meet our various needs. As for those single vertical apps that can only meet certain specific needs, people love and hate them, and they go back and forth between downloading and uninstalling them. In the end, the phone’s memory problem overcame our hesitation, and those vertical single-function apps could not escape the fate of being uninstalled.

This is an era of information overflow and also an era of APP proliferation. Many people have asked whether there is a tool that can include all APPs and can be used with just a search. This is an unimaginable future, but also a future full of opportunities.

The emergence of mini programs has had a huge impact on APPs to a great extent. It is even more fatal for operators engaged in promoting APP. How to say it?

We all know that in the current environment, people's eyes are flooded with all kinds of information. For a time, user attention has become a scarce commodity, and everyone is competing for users' time and attention. However, with the development of mobile Internet , most of people's time is concentrated on 20% of APPs. For example, WeChat, QQ, Toutiao and other APPs have occupied 80% of the time. So, these leading apps have basically covered all the traffic. Do you think they still need promotion?

The APPs that apply for the mini program are basically those low-frequency tool APPs, and these APPs are exactly the goals that our promoters strive to launch every day. If he doesn’t make an APP, then what is the meaning of the operator’s existence?

Just like website promotion in the portal era and APP promotion in the mobile Internet era, the operation and promotion of mini programs belong to this era.

2. If the arrival of mini programs is to subvert APP, then WeChat is to revolutionize itself

I believe that many users will welcome the launch of mini programs, because there are too many apps in our mobile phones. Some apps are used once a month, and some are only used a few times a year. However, if they are left there and not deleted, they will take up memory and make the phone run slowly.

Now, most of the mini programs are for rigid demand and low frequency. When not in use, I can put them in WeChat and search for them when needed. This is the biggest benefit of mini programs to users.

However, when WeChat mini programs came out, many people shouted that the era of APPs was coming to an end, and that there would no longer be APPs in the next 5-10 years and that mini programs would replace them. Is this really the case? I don’t think so.

We all know that WeChat has entered its sixth year and has nearly 800 million users. What a scary concept! It means that 8 out of 13 Chinese people use WeChat. Is there any other app that can do this? But everyone knows that APPs have a life cycle, not to mention WeChat, which has nearly 800 million users. In 2016, facing the weakening of the demographic dividend, the user growth rate will gradually slow down. Mini Programs are a new opening point for WeChat in this era, which can reverse the era of rampant APPs and change the inherent form of APPs in the past.

However, it should be noted that this is not about subverting APP, nor is it about revolutionizing the carriers of mobile terminals, namely application stores .

Because WeChat itself is an APP, but it has more users and more daily active users, so it is commonly known as a super APP. However, it is still an APP in essence, and it still needs mobile terminals to carry it. Otherwise, where can people find WeChat? When you need to update WeChat, where do you go?

So this may be the reason why WeChat no longer calls mini programs application numbers .

3. The arrival of mini programs has probably had the following impact on people working in the Internet industry

Recently, WeChat mini-programs were released, and I tested a few of them right away, and found them to be pretty good. After the test, I have been wondering what impact mini programs will have on our future lives? Then I thought about it for a long time. It's nothing more than when you are ordering food in a fast food restaurant, you see a lot of people, and then you see a QR code next to it. You scan it to enter the ordering page. After ordering, you can avoid the trouble of queuing. Imagine scenes like this. But this is indeed the future of mini programs.

But for those of us working in the Internet industry, there may still be these changes.

1.for operation

In the era of mobile Internet, the operators are APPs, WeChat public accounts , some websites... but in the future, the operators may also include mini programs.

In life, maybe when someone asks you what you do, you answer: "Operations." "What kind of operations are you doing?" "I am currently operating the company's mini program." This is not the future, this is now.

In terms of product operation thinking, mini programs have no bidding ranking, no ASO , and no so-called SEO , so as operators, we must keep pace with the times in product operation thinking. If you are operating your own mini program now, how would you operate it?

2.for technology

To build a small program, you just need to find a JavaScript engineer and a backend engineer. And it only needs to be developed once! The two platforms are fully compatible, time and cost can be reduced to 1/3 of the original, the user experience is not inferior to the native client, and scanning the code to start is more convenient than opening the mobile phone search application. This is the simple development of mini programs, saving time and effort.

I think the impact on technology is that more programmers will start their own businesses and set up small program outsourcing companies. The popularity of mini programs is bound to bring about a wave of entrepreneurship, and part of this entrepreneurial wave may be concentrated in technology outsourcing companies, and many programmers will work on their own. Many years later, this group of programmers may say: Mini Programs saved me four years of hard work.

3.for design

With the launch of WeChat mini-programs, I believe UI designers will become popular again in the short term. Web pages, iOS apps, and Android apps each use different structural layouts and style description languages, which brings great troubles in design and development. With HTML and CSS as unified structural layout and style design languages ​​for web and apps, the learning threshold for front-end design will be greatly reduced. In the future, there will be more and more full-stack designers with excellent design concepts and proficient in responsive web design, app UI, and interaction design, and at the same time, the requirements for designer positions will become higher and higher.

I remember a sentence from Kevin Kelly's (kk) "The Inevitable": The future has arrived, it's just not popular yet. And I want to say: the future has already arrived, and mini programs are the trend.

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

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