Deep Strike | Why QQ is obsessed with young people

How to log out of QQ? The answer was found some time ago.

As long as you update to QQ version 7.9.9, click "Avatar", "Settings", "Account", "Device Security", you can enter the "Logout QQ Account" page. If you meet the logout conditions described on the page, you can apply for logout. Although this function is currently only available on the Android version, you will have to wait for iOS, but the right to log out is already in front of you.

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To cancel or not to cancel has become a question that has sparked widespread discussion. Unlike abandoning accounts on other Internet products, most users would hesitate to cancel their QQ accounts even if they wanted to.

Looking back at the development of China's Internet, QQ is one of the most important products. The slightly fat penguin wearing a red scarf grew up amid doubts. For Tencent, QQ provided the most solid and stable support for its early development; for users, it is associated with many memories of past life. Moments, photo albums, diaries, games... some stories are recorded here, and some stories happened here. Even the "beep beep beep beep" message notification sound has become a unique existence and has been registered as a sound trademark by Tencent.

As they get older, many users have left QQ, but their past experiences are still stored in their accounts. Therefore, questions like "Why should I cancel my account as a witness to my youth?" have become a common attitude on the Internet.

As a social product, QQ is tied to the "youth" of old users. As old users gradually leave, new young people flock in. Coming and going, QQ still sticks to similar people and the past.

The logout function is now available

This is not the first time that QQ has launched a logout function. It is easy to register but difficult to log out, and the issue of online account logout has caused controversy in the past.

At the beginning of 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology promulgated the "Regulations on the Protection of Personal Information of Telecommunications and Internet Users" (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Order No. 24), which clearly stated that "telecommunications business operators and Internet information service providers shall stop collecting and using users' personal information after users terminate their use of telecommunications services or Internet information services, and provide users with the service of canceling their numbers or accounts."

One of the backgrounds of the above regulations is the information security risks brought by the difficulty of account cancellation. The "China Internet User Rights Protection Survey Report 2016" mentioned that according to incomplete statistics, 6.5 billion pieces of personal information were leaked on the black market in 2016. Nan Fang Daily found in a survey on March 15, 2017 that in many fields such as mobile travel, social networks, e-commerce services, and video websites, the problem of difficulty in account cancellation or lack of cancellation methods is common.

Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Center of China University of Political Science and Law, once pointed out that an account is a virtual property on the surface, but in fact it is a collection of user data rights. Data rights belong to the privacy rights derived from the privacy rights stipulated in our country's laws and are a basic right of users, so the right to cancel should also be regarded as a basic right. However, the number, data and activity of users are directly related to the interests of the company, and the process of waiting for the cancellation function to be launched has not been smooth. Until August last year, the People's Daily also published an article on this: It is not possible to "stumble" users from canceling their online accounts.

For QQ, the first cancellation function was on March 20 last year. At that time, Tencent announced that QQ had opened the "account cancellation" function, and users could choose this function by themselves. Similar to the current situation, many netizens said in the discussion that they would not cancel their accounts, "My youth is all in it."

Interestingly, just one day later, those who were reluctant to part with their QQ accounts no longer had to consider whether to cancel their accounts, as Tencent suddenly removed the cancellation function. "The QQ team conducted a grayscale test on the QQ account cancellation function and collected a lot of feedback from participating users on this function. In order to provide users with a better user experience, we temporarily removed the function on March 21 and will put it back online after further optimizing the experience."

According to Tencent’s statement at the time, the “optimization” of QQ’s logout function took almost a full year.

However, it does not mean that your QQ account will always exist if you do not cancel it. In fact, in addition to users actively canceling their accounts, QQ also has a set of rules for recovering accounts. For ordinary QQ accounts, if you do not log in within 3 days after registration, log in within 24 hours after registration but not log in for 45 days, or do not log in for 3 months, the number may be recovered by Tencent. For QQ premium numbers, if the premium number membership service expires and is not renewed for more than 90 days, the number will be recovered by the system.

If you haven't logged into QQ for a long time and don't want to lose your account, it's best to log in occasionally to check.

Super social products are in trouble

On February 20 this year, QQ turned 20 years old. 20 years ago, "QQ" was not its official name.

Ma Huateng recalled the past in his WeChat Moments, "Unconsciously, I remembered that 20 years ago, between tonight and tomorrow morning, the first version of QQ99a, which was only a few hundred KB, was ready to go."

Nine months after QQ was launched, the number of registered users exceeded 1 million. Two years after its launch, the number of online users exceeded 1 million, while the number of registered users increased to 50 million. In March 2002, the number of registered QQ users exceeded 100 million. In February 2005, the number of concurrent online users of Tencent QQ exceeded 10 million. In February 2005, the number of concurrent online users of QQ exceeded 10 million for the first time. In March 2010, the number of concurrent online users of QQ exceeded 100 million.

According to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), in the first half of 2010, the total number of Chinese Internet users was only 420 million. In other words, one quarter of Internet users were online on QQ at the same time. Even if some users log in to multiple accounts at the same time, QQ's performance is still eye-catching. Relying on QQ's huge user base and its own financial resources, Tencent has been able to expand its business almost unstoppably.

Cai Wensheng, an angel investor who has invested in dozens of Internet projects including 4399 Games, Baofeng Video, and 58.com, said at the time: “It would be a lie to say that I am not worried about competition from QQ.” There are many people with a similar mentality.

However, product development has its own rise and fall cycle, user needs are changing, the industry environment is changing, and QQ is bound to face a downward turn one day.

In the second quarter of 2016, QQ's monthly active users peaked at 899 million, and have been declining ever since. It fell to 877 million in the third quarter of 2016, and then to 803 million in the third quarter of 2018. Meanwhile, WeChat's user base continues to grow, with the combined monthly active users of WeChat and WeChat reaching 1.083 billion. QQ was once the most powerful tool in the field of instant messaging, but now another Tencent product has taken over the top spot.

In fact, there were signs of a decline in QQ user data earlier.

Judging from the Baidu Index, WeChat's search index has been higher than QQ since July 2015. The era when QQ dominated social networking has finally come to an end.

QQ itself is also aware of its problems. In December 2015, Yan Xianqing, deputy director of Tencent Product Center, shared his views on the development of QQ at the Tencent Innovation Conference, quoting Ma Huateng: In fact, you did nothing wrong, the problem is that you are too old. QQ is one of the most important Internet products, and it has also become one of the oldest products on the Chinese Internet.

In his sharing, Yan Xianqing mentioned that QQ has 860 million monthly active users, 639 million monthly active users on smart terminals, and 239 million concurrent online users. These data still look impressive, but Yan Xianqing admitted that when the mobile Internet emerged, QQ missed the opportunity and fell behind by two years due to multiple reasons such as the user experience of the PC era and the internal organizational structure.

WeChat's rapid rise is astonishing and no one can stop it. Among the competitors it has surpassed along the way, QQ, also owned by Tencent, is the most powerful one.

QQ needs to find a new path and focus on two things: mobility and youth.

In 2015, people born in the 1990s and 2000s accounted for nearly half of QQ users, and the proportion of young people is still increasing. Old users are difficult to retain, so it is natural to focus on young people. Yan Xianqing mentioned at the time that products should have emotions and attitudes, and polish product details with a young mentality and perspective.

QQ is already old, but what it wants to do is to become “younger”.

Focusing on young people beyond WeChat

In November 2018, Tencent Global Partner Conference was held. At the QQ sub-forum on "New Content, New Social", Tencent demonstrated its continued layout of the overall ecosystem of young content and announced a series of support plans to promote the further development of the young content ecosystem.

In the vertical interest areas that young people are interested in, such as e-sports, ACG, live broadcasting, and games, QQ has launched products such as Penguin E-sports, Bodong Planet, NOW Live Broadcasting, and QQ Light Games. In terms of NOW Live Broadcasting, it launched the "Musician Plan" to select anchors and talents, integrate Tencent's resources to create universal musicians, and launched the "NOW Production Plan" to work with professional institutions to jointly create a content ecosystem.

In the field of e-sports, Penguin E-sports has established a talent training system. Tencent said that it will provide all-round support in terms of live content design, special event planning, resource support, brand packaging, etc. for each anchor at their growth stage. At the same time, in the field of content information, QQ has also further upgraded its cooperation based on the preferences of young people.

The QuestMobile report focuses on Generation Z netizens under the age of 24, pointing out that there is no significant difference between them and the general netizens in the use of traditional social software, but compared with WeChat, this group has a unique preference for QQ. In October 2018, the proportion of Generation Z users of WeChat was 33.3%, and the proportion of Generation Z users of QQ was 37.5%. Tencent itself released a report in June 2018, also stating that QQ is the most commonly used social product by those born after 1995.

Regardless of the data, it is generally believed in online discussions that young people prefer to use QQ, while older users prefer WeChat. Sina Technology communicated with the post-00s and received similar feedback. Although they also use WeChat, they use QQ more frequently. And because many of their friends use QQ, they also use it more. Each generation of users has its own preferences, and QQ focuses more on the various needs of the youth group than WeChat.

Previously, 36kr and other media reported that QQ was testing a portal to expand the list of friends. For users who are no longer young and have not used QQ for a long time, the term "expanding the list" may be completely unknown. "Expanding the list" means expanding the friend list. Compared with earlier users, those born after 2000 have shown a stronger desire to socialize. In the past two years, many users on QQ have been talking about expanding their list of friends. If you search for "expanding the list", you can see various groups for expanding the list of friends.

In these groups, people may post messages about expanding their social network and making friends from early morning to late at night. Messages like "expanding social network + I'm super nice and frequently asking for initiative" will continue to flood the screen. Once a friend is added, the other party will want to like each other's posts.

Some netizens born in the 2000s who are keen on expanding their circle of friends said, "When you are young, you like to be admired." They enjoy likes and like the feeling of "feeling great when you get a lot of likes."

Ma Huateng said before that the emergence of WeChat has hit QQ's business, and QQ has made huge sacrifices, but this is a strategic necessity. No product can shake WeChat's social foundation. At present, in the process of WeChat's further development in the past two years, QQ has launched some similar functions, but the two have gradually shown more and more different characteristics. It can be said that QQ has found a path that suits itself, and it and WeChat have harvested the social needs of netizens at different levels.

Looking into the future, WeChat will undoubtedly play one of the most important roles in Tencent's strategic transformation to industrial Internet. Whether QQ can continue to attract young people in its constant changes will be a key challenge it has to face.