What has changed in WeChat in the past eleven years?

On January 6, 2022, the WeChat team’s annual WeChat Open Class PRO version kicked off in Guangzhou.

11 years ago, on January 21, 2011, WeChat version 1.0 was released, and gradually grew into a national application and an important carrier of Internet life in China. After that, each upgrade of WeChat has also affected the lives of hundreds of millions of people. At the main forum of this session, WeChat introduced the latest progress of five major businesses, including video accounts, WeChat payment, mini programs, search, and enterprise WeChat. DoNews also sorted and summarized them for readers as soon as possible.

Video account: Let more people produce content and let those who produce content get rewards

Westlife's online concert a few weeks ago attracted 20 million viewers, with PCU (maximum concurrent users) reaching 1.5 million, enough to fill 15 Bird's Nest stadiums.

On January 19, 2020, the video account started internal testing. WeChat defines the video account as: a platform where everyone can record and create, and also a window to understand others and the world. "In the first year, we basically built the entire product framework; in the second year, we tried to establish our own content operation direction and content operation methods." said the lecturer of the WeChat open class video account.

At the 2022 WeChat Open Class PRO, Video Account announced its growth changes over the past year, including four aspects: consumption growth, capacity release, encouraging content, and author incentives.

In terms of content consumption, video accounts have frequently produced popular content, with content that has received over a million likes. The number of viewers of live broadcasts of hot topics such as the launch of Shenzhou XII and the return of Meng Wanzhou has repeatedly set new records. Video accounts have become a new platform for users to browse news events and experience leisure and entertainment. The release of capabilities is reflected in the combination and connection of the ecological system.

In the WeChat content ecosystem, Video Account is an "atomic basic content component" that can be freely combined with other atomic components to produce chemical reactions. By integrating and connecting with products such as WeChat Pay and Enterprise WeChat, creators can have the ability to operate in their own private domain.

In the future, Video Account will encourage down-to-earth, original content from real people, including life tips, pan-entertainment, pan-information, and other videos and live broadcasts. Video Account has also launched a "Creator Incentive Plan" to provide traffic for original content, so that 10 million original creators can have traffic, and 1 million high-quality creators can earn income, further improving the growth system for content creators.

"Next, we will continue to try to build a stronger stage, so that more people can come up and produce content, so that more users can get the content they want here, create more user value, and let those who provide content get rewards by creating value. These are some of the things we will focus on in the next year."

WeChat Pay: At the end of 2021, the amount of funds defrauded dropped by 90% compared to the beginning of the year

Zhang Ying, the lecturer of WeChat Pay’s public course, is a “veteran” who joined Tencent in 2002. He shared four stories and four sets of data.

The first story was that one night in early 2016, Zhang Xiaolong told him that Tencent decided to hand over WeChat Pay to him. When asked what the goal of WeChat Pay was, Zhang Ying replied "to achieve 100 million transactions a day", and Zhang Xiaolong said: "That's totally wrong." Later, Zhang Xiaolong's answer impressed him - "Our goal is to make WeChat Pay a habit for WeChat users and a part of their lives."

This originally seemed like an "impossible mission", but the open ecosystem made the impossible possible. This is the first set of data. WeChat Pay has about 1,200 employees, but has 23,000 monthly active service providers, 1,800+ banks and payment institutions, and more than 1 million ecosystem partners. The ecosystem has more than 1 million employees, and partners have brought 97% of offline transactions. This is the power of an open ecosystem.

The second story is about the digitization of paper coupons. In the past few years, WeChat Pay has been committed to the digital operation of merchants, but this is very difficult. To become a digital merchant, we must also solve a series of digital upgrade issues such as issuing coupons, verification, and reconciliation. Through cooperation with ecological partners, more than 10 million merchants, all large and medium-sized merchants, have been connected to the WeChat Pay card and coupon system, completing 22.9 billion actual verification discounts and leveraging 520 billion social consumption.

The third story is about small and micro businesses. In the past few years, WeChat Pay has issued more than 50 million payment code cards, 11 million payment speakers, and a simple SaaS platform "Small Account Book". Every month, 48 million small businesses visit the mini program to conduct reconciliation and other management. In addition, there are more than 45 million payment gift users and more than 22 million business insurance. WeChat Pay's small and micro business business has always been in a loss-making state, but Zhang Ying said that in the next three years, it will plan to subsidize more than 10 billion to help small and micro businesses further upgrade to digitalization.

Since the second half of 2019, WeChat Pay has joined forces with other teams at Tencent to provide reminders for suspicious transactions, hoping that "there will be no fraud in the world." By the end of 2021, the amount of large amounts of money defrauded had dropped by 90% compared to the beginning of the year. "This may be the proudest thing in 2021."

WeChat Pay Points, which was originally intended to reduce transaction friction, has been activated by more than 50% of users and has more than 3,000 industry solutions. In the deposit-free industry, it has reduced transaction friction by 250 billion yuan and will be applied to more scenarios.

The final story is a personal one, about a noodle shop in Hangzhou that provides free noodles to those in need.

In 2021, thousands of companies and stores will work with WeChat to provide sanitation workers with a one-cent package, with the rest of the cost borne by WeChat, kind users and companies. Zhang Ying said that she feels particularly satisfied when she thinks about helping others.

Mini Programs: More than 450 million people use Mini Programs every day

In three days, the mini program will celebrate its fifth anniversary. In 2017, Zhang Xiaolong officially launched the WeChat mini program at the WeChat Open Class and proposed the direction and goal of "within reach and everywhere". Today, the mini program is truly everywhere in our lives.

In 2021, more than 450 million people used mini programs every day, with the average daily usage increasing by 32% year-on-year compared to 2020. The number of payment users of mini programs increased by 80%, and the average order value increased significantly. During the epidemic, more than 700 million users used mini programs to enjoy medical services; 750 million users used the collaboration tools of mini programs; and an average of more than 100 million users used government services on mini programs every day.

Data shows that in 2021, the transaction volume of mini programs in the retail, tourism and catering industries increased by more than 100% year-on-year, and the number of mini programs with transactions increased by 28% year-on-year. Users are gradually accustomed to living and consuming on mini programs, especially young users, whose growth is particularly fast, and middle-aged and elderly groups also have specific favorite types.

The number of active mini programs is also growing steadily, up 40% from 2020, of which the number of mini programs with transactions has increased by nearly 30%, and 90% of the growth comes from small and medium-sized businesses. The number of mini program developers has exceeded 3 million. Compared with 2020, with the upgrade of advertising capabilities, the scale of mini program traffic monetization in 2021 has increased by more than 90% year-on-year, and the share of WeChat advertising given to mini program developers is close to 10 billion.

Mini programs are also constantly improving the commercialization level of the industry. Taking the catering industry as an example, with the help of scanning code to order food, pre-ordering, and mini program takeout, mini programs continue to extend the service radius of merchants' stores and bring in incremental revenue. In 2021, the average daily number of users of catering merchants' mini programs reached 10 million, and the repurchase rate reached 3 times that of the industry as a whole.

More and more brand merchants are combining stores with mini programs, increasing the repurchase rate of goods through shopping guide recommendations and store delivery models. More than 30% of fashion store mini program transactions come from their own shopping guides and offline stores. In addition, brands and terminals are further connected. B2b mini programs help brands connect with more than one million terminal stores and reduce marketing costs.

Search: Use WeChat to search all

Initially, Search was just an entrance on the main interface of WeChat conversation. In the earliest version of WeChat, it could only search local chat records and contact information in the address book, and did not have real search capabilities.

However, as the WeChat ecosystem continues to develop, SouYiso has also added network search capabilities and continued to improve, and can now cover the search needs of the vast majority of users. Now, SouYiso has become a search that every WeChat user can use at any time. SouYiso connects WeChat ecosystem content producers and service providers, as well as the majority of users, providing users with a one-stop search and problem solution.

So far, SouYisou has more than 700 million monthly active users, up 20% from the previous year. At the WeChat Open Class PRO, Zhou Hao, vice president of Tencent and head of WeChat SouYisou, said: "On the one hand, we continue to understand and integrate massive amounts of content to accurately match users. On the other hand, SouYisou also helps content creators, service providers and brand owners better connect to the ecosystem and users."

The goal of SouYisou is driven by user demand, so the goal of SouYisou's continuous optimization is to "search everything with WeChat." This includes not only the "content" produced within the WeChat system, but also the massive content produced outside the ecosystem but connected to the ecosystem.

For example, the query of Internet buzzwords - what does YYDS mean? The content of Xiaoji Dictionary is connected to the WeChat ecosystem through the touchpoints of the mini program. After optimization, both the user side and the business side are satisfied. The search demand under this category has increased by 139%, and it has also contributed 68% of the daily active users to the mini program.

In the future, Souyisou will have three steps. In the next step, Souyisou will continue to understand and explore the unique and high-quality content and services in the WeChat ecosystem, and display these content and services to users accurately. At present, Souyisou has supported official registration of more than 5,100 public hospitals, and has cumulatively served more than 100 million people.

Furthermore, in order to accurately and efficiently connect services within the WeChat ecosystem to users, Souyisou will optimize the evaluation of service availability and quality. For example, the brand official area is actually an intersection that aggregates the various operational capabilities of brand owners within the WeChat ecosystem. Souyisou hopes to provide users with a global view of brand owners.

Furthermore, on the user experience side, SouYisou will further lower the threshold for user searches. When users have search needs, they can search at their fingertips. At the same time, SouYisou can also meet user needs to the greatest extent and truly realize "search everything with WeChat".

WeChat for Business: 140 million services are generated every hour

Three years ago, Zhang Xiaolong said in a WeChat open class: "If WeChat for Business is only defined as a communication tool within the enterprise, its use case and significance will be small. Only when it is extended to the outside of the enterprise can it generate greater value."

WeChat for Business has been focusing on building "enterprise-specific connectors" to create value through connections. Three years ago, WeChat for Business began to communicate with WeChat, and people are services. Now, more and more companies and organizations are using WeChat for Business: every hour, 1.15 million employees use WeChat for Business to serve users on WeChat, generating 140 million service processes.

At the 2022 WeChat Open Class PRO, Enterprise WeChat shared three stories about "connection".

The secret of the hot sales of the new car "MINIEV" of the veteran car company Wuling Hongguang lies in the fan communication group organized by Wuling. Through corporate WeChat, Wuling connects a large number of car owners and potential customers. The car owners' "free speech" in the communication group allows Wuling to gain insight into the new needs of the younger generation of customers, and ultimately promote the design and production of products in reverse.

Sofia, a whole-house custom home furnishing company, has 7 factories and more than 50,000 upstream and downstream employees across the country. In order to achieve efficient collaboration among employees, Sofia uses WeChat for Business. At the front end, Sofia uses the intercommunication group to pull its customers, designers and service specialists into a group. Any changes in customer opinions can be synchronized in real time in the group; at the back end, the front-end drawings can be uploaded by dealers to the WeChat for Business system, and the system can decompose the drawings into each version data and distribute them to the back-end factories for production. The production progress can also be queried in real time on WeChat for Business.

In addition, DJI Agriculture uses WeChat for Business to open a farmer training academy to guide farmers in operating drones and solve agricultural plant protection issues; Yichang, Hubei uses WeChat for Business to help grid workers serve residents throughout the city. Whether it is vaccination or applying for a senior citizen card, there is no need to go to the service hall once, it can be solved in the group.

"Connection not only brings trust, but also innovation and development," said Huang Tieming, vice president of Tencent WeChat Business Group and head of WeChat for Business. In the future, WeChat for Business will continue to deepen its interoperability with WeChat, and continue to provide merchants and enterprises with more convenient and faster functions.

Overall, the scale of this year's WeChat Open Class PRO is slightly smaller than in previous years, and Zhang Xiaolong, the soul of WeChat, is also absent.

Judging from the actual releases, most of them are reporting on the achievements in 2021. This is understandable. After all, after 11 years of development, WeChat has become a national application. But precisely because of this, it is impossible for it to change as drastically as a new APP.

This year, the video account was the first to be released. It is also the part of WeChat that has changed the most and updated most frequently in the past year. It can be foreseen that video will also be a key direction of WeChat's development, but as to whether the video account can reverse Tencent's decline in the short video field for many years, it is still an unknown.

On the other hand, whether it is the support of corporate payments for small and micro enterprises, or the support of mini programs for anti-epidemic and government affairs, it also reflects the responsibility that WeChat should have as a national application. Our expectation for WeChat is not only that WeChat becomes better, but that WeChat makes China better.