Analysis of WeChat reading products!

This article is the first in a series of analysis articles on WeChat Reading . This series of articles may reach nearly 50,000 words. Taking into account the limited reading energy of readers, we will launch several relatively independent articles based on versions and iteration focuses. This article is the first one, analyzing the original intention of WeChat Reading from the perspective of product positioning.

1. Product Description

Nowadays, major mature software products, especially apps that have gone through multiple major versions, have basically entered the stage of focusing on operations and commercialization.

It is very important to understand the original intention of a product - the positioning at the time of project establishment, because subsequent changes will change with changes in the market and corporate strategy, and the positioning will naturally be adjusted , which is unpredictable, but change is the beauty of product making.

The author has done the complete implementation process from 0 to 1 of a product. From the introduction of the APP, the core selling point of the product can actually be shown, and the product positioning can also be roughly deduced. WeChat Reading’s slogan on the AppStore has not changed since then:

• 【WeChat Reading】is the official reading application based on WeChat relationship chain, supporting both iPhone and iPad terminal platforms.
• While providing a perfect reading experience, it recommends suitable books to users, and users can check the reading status of their WeChat friends, discuss the books they are reading with their friends, etc.
• 【Carefully polished reading experience】EPUB's exquisite book layout allows you to personalize your own reading style;
• [Discover high-quality books with friends] Help you discover the next good book that suits you. There is a vast sea of ​​books. You may as well ask your WeChat friends to help you filter and quickly find high-quality books.
• [Discuss, exchange and collide with friends] Encounter your friends' ideas while reading, exchange your reading experience with friends and collide with more sparks. This time, let reading no longer be lonely;
• [Compete with friends in reading time] This serious reading game allows you to easily understand your own reading time. Not only will you gain knowledge from reading, but you will also gain a sense of accomplishment from competing with your friends.

2. Product version overview

1. Version History

From the version iteration history of WeChat Reading, from the release of 1.0 on August 27, 2015 to January 22, 2022, WeChat Reading has iterated 141 versions, including 6 major versions, among which:

• 1.0 has 22 iterations, 5 mid-level versions, and 17 minor versions;
• The 2.0 major version has 19 iterations, 4 medium versions, and 15 minor versions;
• 3.0 has 17 iterations, 6 mid-level versions, and 11 minor versions;
• 4.0 has 36 iterations, 7 mid-level versions, and 29 minor versions;
• Version 5.0 has 29 iterations, including 5 mid-level versions and 24 minor versions.
• 6.0 has iterated 5 versions so far, 1 mid-version, and 4 minor versions;

Among the updated versions that removed optimization bugs and [improved experience], a total of 77 updated versions with obvious records were screened out.

Among them, 1.0 has 16 versions, 2.0 has 15 versions, 3.0 has 10 versions, 4.0 has 15 versions, 5.0 has 16 versions, and 6.0 has 4 versions.

Afterwards, I spent some time categorizing all versions of content into cards, which were divided into five major categories: reading experience updates, relationship chains and community updates, content derivatives (UGC), content and recommendations, and commercialization.

Then we get the updated content category of each updated version, and then we move up one dimension. From the perspective of the app iteration cycle, we can see that the app updates are obviously biased towards history, as shown in the following figure:

2. Version focus

In the 6 major versions, the reading experience has been continuously updated, which is understandable because as a reading product, this is the most basic experience guarantee.

From a coarse-grained perspective, the three major versions 1, 2, and 3 mainly optimize the relationship chain, idea ecology (UGC), and APP content (books, etc.), and explore commercialization in version 3, while in versions 4 and 5, they began to continuously focus on content filling and commercialization.

The four major categories of versions 1-6 have basically completed comprehensive optimization work and are beginning to return to social (community).

In the 1.0 version, emphasis was placed on the use of WeChat friend relationship chains, such as following friends, friend interactions, personal profile display, book sharing, and other content. The second focus was on creating UGC guidance based on specific books, such as book ratings, ideas, and other operations. Content and recommendation were only started to be built at the end of the version, and it can be seen that the library size was not very large in the early stages.

With version 2, we will continue to optimize the relationship chain and UGC creation, and at the same time focus on content and recommendation, optimize the bookstore, and fill in the content. This major version is moving forward in parallel. After ensuring the most basic experience of reading and relationship chain in 1.0, we will devote time and energy to make up for the disadvantage of insufficient content.

As of version 3, the updated content is relatively small, mainly focusing on the improvement of some functions of version 2, as well as exploring greater progress in commercialization, and continuing to process content and recommendations.

The 4th version had many updates, focusing on content and recommendations, and commercialization began to continue to gain momentum. The impact of version 4 continued into version 5. In the late stage of version 5, content and recommendations came to an end, and the main optimization was on commercialization.

In version 6, the focus began to be on community building.

Remark:

Due to its age, version 1.0 of the package cannot be used on the latest system. I bought an iPhone with an old system and it is still unable to run it. It can only run up to version 3.6 at the lowest, and there are crashes at multiple function entrances, which should be caused by data structure modifications.

Therefore, we used search engines to collect screenshots of products from version 1.0 in 2015 to version 3.0 in 2019 as a means of analysis. Some functional diagrams are missing, but this article does not analyze the specific details.

3. Version 1.0 - Reading and Social Exploration

First look at version 1.0

1. Find a book

At the product level, WeChat Reading divides book searching into two major sections: recommending good books and searching in the bookstore. Although both functions are available, their priorities are obviously different, as shown in the following figure:

Recommended books directly occupies a first-level tab and is the main display interface. It directly uses cards to display the books that friends are reading. There are only two entrances to search in the bookstore. One is to add it in the [Bookshelf] interface. You need to click Add before you can enter the search and book classification. It is hidden deeper. The other is located on the discovery page card. After sliding to the far right, Find More appears, and you need to click to search.

Obviously, WeChat Reading hopes that WeChat users will come in to find books based on the logic of what their friends are reading (recommended). If they don’t like any of the recommendations, a list with the highest popularity (number of readers) will be provided. If they still don’t like anything, they can go to the bookstore for classification. Even if the user has a direct purpose, at least when they see their friends reading, they will take a glance at what book it is, and that’s enough.

In essence, the idea of ​​discovering good books or recommending suitable books is a content delivery mechanism based on social relationships, or friend recommendations. Many people will say, why do I need friend recommendations? Wouldn't it be more convenient if the system recommendation algorithm was well done?

But this was in 2015, and recommendation algorithms also required deep user data. For a newly released product, it was impossible to collect the required amount of data in a short period of time.

Moreover, WeChat excels at social networking, and its best feature is the effective mapping and amplification of relationships between people in the mobile Internet era .

No matter how good the algorithm is, the system is cold and heartless, so WeChat Reading uses social relationships to enter the market. Books that your friends have read or are reading are equivalent to endorsing the book. Just as WeChat's Zhang Xiaolong said, reading books recommended by friends' endorsements is a form of social sharing. It has user value at the social level, which is completely different from system recommendations.

2. Reading

Reading should be a basic function of a reading product, as shown in the figure:

After clicking on the book you want to read, you will enter the content reading interface. Personalized operations for the book are placed below, including chapters, progress, display and font.

From the layout point of view, there are two small categories: Chapter and progress are one category, which has the nature of jumping throughout the book, making it convenient for users to select content, while display and font serve the content display, making it convenient for users to read comfortably.

Click on a chapter to view the table of contents, bookmarks and underlining. Underlining indicates the sentences you pay more attention to during the reading process, which is a bit like when we were in school and underlining was used to mark the key content. The table of contents is equivalent to the book framework provided by the author, and underlining looks at the popular content from a global perspective, which is equivalent to your grasp of the key points of the whole book's context.

Progress means quickly turning pages. You can see the progress bar after clicking it. You can also drag the progress bar to jump to the target page. You can also click left and right to quickly switch to the previous or next chapter. This is an option provided to readers to roam through the entire book.

Clicking on the display provides brightness adjustment and display effects to meet the needs of scenes such as eye protection and night scenes. The font provides several common fonts, and the size can be adjusted specifically.

Operations other than books are placed at the top. Except for the shopping cart, the other three functions are all related to social interaction. The first is ideas, which will be mentioned later. The second is private reading. After it is turned on, your friends will not be able to see that you have read this book and the corresponding ideas. Users can decide which ones are public and which ones are not. The third is more, which is actually sharing books with friends and friends. It can be seen that the operation area also tries to guide users to share on social networks.

Let's go back to the content of the book itself. Imagine the scene when we are reading a physical book. In fact, we like to make marks, especially when we see sentences we like. We will use some colored pens to underline or write them down. Moreover, when we have ideas, we will leave our thoughts in the blank space between the lines or on the white space of the page. After reading a book, we will feel a sense of achievement when we look back.

Therefore, taking this scenario into consideration, WeChat Reading allows users to copy, underline, write ideas and forward them after selecting content. For example, copying satisfies the user's need to excerpt, underlining satisfies the need to mark key content, and writing ideas is writing down thoughts. Of course, social sharing will definitely not be missing.

At the same time, readers can also see other readers' thoughts, which helps them to understand the content of the book more deeply, to have more diverse thinking and to get answers to their doubts.

Moreover, the display of other people's ideas is not visually highlighted, but simply displayed by dotted lines in the content. This is just like seeing the content underlined by friends after borrowing a book from them in real life, which is in line with the concept of social sharing.

But in terms of functionality alone, when it comes to reading experience, the products on the market are all similar, and version 1.0 does not have any distinct advantages.

3. On Books

As shown in the picture, the content of the idea page is the flow of friends' ideas about books. In fact, it is similar to the "Book Friends Circle" in the circle of friends. Users can like and comment on their friends' dynamics. Of course, users can choose whether to make their ideas public. If not, there will be no corresponding ideas in the idea flow.

WeChat Reading regards ideas as a first-level tab, which shows how much importance it attaches to it. This is also one of its differentiated features.

WeChat Reading has entered the reading market from the direction of social reading, and it certainly emphasizes the relationship chain, which is a function that other reading apps cannot have inherently and is almost impossible to easily activate later.

If any reading app wants to go the social route, imagine that after A has used XX book for a while, he gets to know B through a book club forum. A and B chat with each other at first, and then they get along very well. So, A says to B, "Let's add each other on WeChat."

The end point of any social interaction among strangers is still WeChat, and the starting point of any social interaction among acquaintances is still WeChat. Moreover, if you want to become friends with others, there must at least be an ice-breaking behavior or scene, but WeChat directly skips this step.

Because the first-level relationship chain is all friends, there is no such thing as breaking the ice. No matter you are chatting on WeChat or in the book, you don’t need to say “hello” first.

In addition, WeChat Reading should have another pursuit. Based on the values ​​of WeChat, it wants to make social interaction more in-depth.

Everyone has at least dozens of friends on WeChat, but how many of them actually chat frequently every week or month?

It is estimated that most of them are just liking the life updates in the circle of friends. WeChat has always been very restrained. What it hopes to do is to efficiently meet the needs of users and leave after use. The same goes for social networking. It hopes that users' social networking can also be efficient and less is more.

What is efficiency? It is nothing more than finding people whose values ​​are similar to yours, or people who appreciate each other. Appreciation and identification are subjective thinking levels, which start with appearance and end with talent?

People like to pry into other people's minds, including their thoughts on things. Idea circles provide this path, a flow of thoughts that is separate from the dynamic flow of mass life, allowing users to gain a deeper understanding of their friends in another way.

If he is a friend you get along well with, seeing his updates can help you get to know him better. Whether you agree or not, it will leave an anchor in your mind and make you think more about the details of your social interactions with him. Behaviors that you may not understand before but were too embarrassed to ask about will become obvious and natural after you understand his views and ideas. This will make the image of your friend more three-dimensional.

However, if they are just friends who like your posts, the quality of their ideas becomes one of the screening criteria, which plays the role of keeping kind people away from villains. At the very least, there will be more possible topics for subsequent friends who agree with your posts, which gives the possibility of friends who like your posts becoming funny friends.

To put it more bluntly, it speeds up the screening of friend intimacy levels.

Think about it, you are a newcomer in the workplace, you have joined a company, and you have added many colleagues on WeChat. And your buddy who is good at socializing and eating and drinking posted a particularly childish dynamic idea on WeChat Reading, which made your three views fall sharply. What would you do?

You will definitely have to make some choices in your subsequent social interactions with him. However, if another colleague who is quiet and not good at speaking has extremely profound ideas in his circle of thoughts and you admire them very much, will the probability of you having dinner with him next time increase?

WeChat is equivalent to a large community. It has established many entertainment and life centers within the community, including a book club. Only a certain group of people can enter the book club. This is a door and also another intangible level of screening. The screening criteria are the users themselves, which is also based on user value.

As for the reading rankings, they are actually similar to WeChat Sports. WeChat Sports was launched on February 8, 2015, half a year earlier than WeChat Reading. Many people say that the WeChat step rankings have changed. In order to get the first place, many people even buy some automatic pedometers, that is, they put their mobile phones on them to count their steps.

But the function is not guilty, the original intention of the function is good. Even if it is really for showing off the steps, it can make users move consciously, which is also a positive guidance. As for those who increase the number of steps, so what?

The same is true for the WeChat reading time rankings. Some people say that reading loses its meaning just for the sake of topping the rankings.

But we have to understand that the reading time of our citizens is not long, and there are few real readers. If we serve them, it is actually niche elitism.

If one wants to shoulder some social responsibilities, one must first improve the quantity before one is qualified to talk about quality. In other words, one must have the support of reading time before one can have the possibility of thinking about the meaning of reading.

If this function encourages people to use reading apps just to top the charts, what’s the harm? As long as more people are encouraged to read consciously, this function will be positive.

To be honest, real readers don't care about this at all. Readers should not only read high-brow books, but also read simple books.

4. Version cycle analysis

As shown in the figure, from the perspective of the major version, the early updates in the 1.0 major version mainly focus on optimizing the reading experience, social sharing with friends, and optimizing ideas.

In terms of reading experience, the main efforts are made in optimizing bookshelf classification, horizontal screen reading on iPad mobile phones, and social sharing with friends. While continuously filling up sharing inducement points, the book gift function was launched in version 1.1.0, which is the starting point for the subsequent buy one get one free and give one get one free promotions. However, considering the channel and copyright reasons, the books are relatively expensive. For users who do not have rich friends, there are no good books to read, which will cause the loss of new users. Therefore, the bookstore has added a free area.

In 1.4.0, the function of sending private messages to book friends was updated, and point-to-point private social interaction was added. In 1.4.1, private messages encouraged book friends to share books and ideas. WeChat Reading still hopes that point-to-point social interaction will still revolve around book content.

In order to make WeChat reading less burdensome for users, 1.4.4 added the function of following friends on their own, avoiding the embarrassing situation of following all WeChat friends directly upon login, and giving the right to follow to users.

In addition, a blacklist function has been added to target invalid reading social interactions, which allows users to be blocked with one click. Version 1.4.6 also adds the ability to share users with friends, promoting wider social interactions.

As for content derivation - user secondary creation, version 1.4.0 mainly optimizes ideas, supports @ and topic insertion, and supports interaction between users rather than single self-thinking.

And idea citations are no longer limited to a single book. You can cite the content of the book to further refine the object of the idea and make the content of the idea more focused, making it easier for other friends to directly access the source content of the idea in a shorter time.

At the same time, ideas can be reprinted - retweeted and quoted, making it possible for high-quality ideas to spread further. Once high-quality ideas receive widespread attention, their weight is bound to rise - the number of likes, reposts and comments. Selected comments, or popular comments, also appear, giving the idea circle more high-quality content and becoming the foundation of the content community.

In 1.4.4, the operation of users publishing ideas has been improved, such as text editing, making it more convenient and efficient for users to publish ideas. 1.4.6 supports users to create book lists. From a product perspective, user-personalized book list content can facilitate subsequent book and book list recommendations, and also provide a source of data for launching high-quality book lists and creating high-quality KOLs in the future.

In version 1.5.0, WeChat Reading pushed a test function to some users - creating collections and publishing articles. Although it was just a test version, it also showed that WeChat Reading also hoped to create a batch of high-quality content for users at that time, making WeChat Reading not only a reading platform, but also a creation platform.

This is somewhat similar to the idea of ​​Douban's content creators, but it has not been widely promoted. It is probably because they have restrained themselves and the timing of the test is wrong. First, it conflicts with the product positioning, and second, there are not yet a large number of active users to provide popularity.

If version 1.0 was updated to this point, it would actually be enough in terms of version positioning, but in versions 1.5.2, 1.5.5, 1.5.6 and 1.5.7, the functions mainly based on voice listening/reading were updated.

In terms of reading experience, audiobooks do liberate the eyes and are another way to acquire content. They meet the multi-channel audio-visual needs of users and expand and satisfy more usage scenarios.

In terms of social relationships, gifting books also comes with a voice message. To be honest, this function can only be used between very close friends, otherwise they would not be the first to think of giving you a book.

In terms of content derivation, a function of users explaining books has been added. This is another way of creating secondary content. However, the type of content, namely user explanation, has a high threshold. Not only do users have to be very proactive, but the level of explanation also has certain requirements. Otherwise, the quality of the secondary derivative content ecosystem cannot be guaranteed, which is also a blow to users.

At the same time, a host radio function was also added, but the result was the same as the short-lived collection function before it, which ended up being shelved. It was probably because the timing was not right, there were conflicts in product positioning, and they were a bit hasty to move forward.

By the way, previously the collection would provide a URL address for the author’s creations. Now this URL is no longer accessible, but the domain name is still there, so it may be opened in the future.

What’s interesting is that in version 1.2, WeChat Reading has updated the reading time to exchange for book coins, that is, half an hour of reading can be exchanged for one coin, and the weekly limit is 10. For ordinary users, this is more than enough to cultivate entry-level reading habits.

Because users will find that reading really can make money. Although the money can only be used to buy books, the behavior is indeed rewarding. After buying books, they will continue to read, and the model of reading to support reading will achieve a self-circulation of behavior and rewards.

That is, if users persist in reading, this behavior will have positive incentives and strengthen the original behavior. Coupled with the rankings, it can allow people who consciously read to develop user habits.

Different from giving away books or directly exchanging books, giving away book coins will encourage users to make a purchase. Every purchase made with book coins will lay the foundation for the subsequent active consumption by users.

Once users form a habit, they will accumulate full bookshelves in WeChat Reading, post many ideas, receive a lot of social feedback, and come into contact with many book lovers. This will create an unquantifiable silent cost. Just like WeChat, even if better social reading products come out, users will not easily give up WeChat Reading.

When it comes to social guidance, I believe that many people have no copyright awareness, which is what users say, "I only pay one dollar for a bunch of books, why should I spend more than ten dollars to buy a licensed e-book?"

This is actually what WeChat Reading wants to do. It hopes to set off a wave of awareness of paying for digital reading content. One type is the underlying products with no copyright and pirated content resources, and the other type is products that spend a lot of money to purchase copyrights and are labeled as free but are actually paid. What WeChat Reading wants to do is nothing more than "I have copyrights, but I won't give them all away for free." Instead, it allows users to use their behavior to exchange the purchased currency, so that users have the subconscious intention to pay.

5. Version market feedback

What was the market feedback after version 1 was launched? As shown in the download, this data comes from the download volume of Qimai Data iOS. The data for earlier versions before 1.4 is no longer available.

However, judging from the trend, there should have been a period of user growth, and the number of downloads continued to decline after 1.5.0, which should be related to the Spring Festival. After work/school started, the number of downloads continued to grow again, and the downloads peaked the day after 1.5.5. It seems that the audiobook function released by WeChat Reading should be popular in the market, and in subsequent versions, the number of downloads began to decline.

In terms of user feedback, due to the long time, the user feedback collected by the third-party platform has not been retained, so I went to Zhihu to search #How to evaluate the product [WeChat Reading]. There are 158 responses in total, most of which were during the 1 major version period. After removing some emotional and invalid responses, the feedback on the product experience is summarized as follows.

The positive reviews are mainly:

1. The interface is simple and refreshing
2. Book recommendations from friends are very interesting
3. Rankings can motivate people to read
4. Underlining is helpful for reading

The main complaints are:

1. Books are too expensive
2. Too few books
3. There are errors in the content of the book, and the quality is questionable
4. Reading is private, and I don’t want the information about my reading to be made public.
5. The rankings are too impetuous, I don't want to compete

In general, the core concept of WeChat Reading - making reading less lonely, social reading was still differentiated at the time, with the proportion being about 50-50. As long as it was not one-sided, this model was temporarily feasible. As for the future changes in the proportion, it depends on whether WeChat Reading can educate users well.

Since users have feedback, they will definitely criticize one and praise the other. This is human nature. They mean that the work is really bad and not as good as XXX. In summary, they think Duokan is more convenient and "free", NetEase Wugou Reading is also free, one hour for free is enough, and Douban Reading provides a better reading experience.

In summary, WeChat Reading has been relatively successful in version 1.0. It helps users select books through the model of friends reading, and uses endorsements to enhance social value. While ensuring the most basic audio-visual experience, it also allows users to actively express their ideas and communicate with each other, while ensuring user autonomy and privacy control. However, there are also many shortcomings, such as book charges, bookstore content, and the quality of book content cannot be guaranteed.

The functions will be improved and fixed slowly as the version number increases, but the addition of new functions, function priorities and related strategies are what we are concerned about.

From version 1, we can see the path of NetEase Cloud Music, but the painful point of NetEase Cloud Music is copyright. No matter how well it does, users will still download Tencent's music software just to listen to a certain authorized song.

Author:loosaumin

Source: loosaumin