QQ's 20th year: slimming down, becoming bloated, and being challenged by WeChat

The sound of "Ding Ding Ding..." aroused people's desire to socialize, and a jumping little penguin announced the arrival of QQ to the public...

Do you still remember your first Martian username, your first non-mainstream signature, and your first cartoon avatar?

Time flies. On February 11, Ma Huateng posted a message on WeChat Moments, expressing his feelings about the birth of QQ 20 years ago. This reminded many people of the days when they used to be with QQ. What has QQ done in the past 20 years?

[[257357]]

The social + content matrix is ​​both innovative and bloated

Since its establishment, QQ has been constantly updated and iterated, but from the beginning to the end it has been developed around the social theme of "connecting people".

Nowadays, there are many forms of social interaction and different ways of playing. When using social software, most users pay more attention to the content of social interaction, and high-quality content can also add color to social interaction. In other words, content is social interaction, which has gradually become a trend.

Tencent saw this trend and made its third strategic adjustment on September 30, 2018, and "social + content" became one of the goals of this major organizational structure adjustment. In fact, as early as the Tencent Global Partner Conference in 2016, Tencent's QQ business officially announced its concept of "entertainment social ecology". This is an attempt by Tencent to combine entertainment content with social platforms.

When users open QQ, they can see many social + content products for young users, such as Friends Weishi, Penguin E-sports, Interest Tribe, Wave Planet, NOW Live, QQ Views, etc., which are quite bloated. However, it is also QQ's exploration and layout in entertainment and social networking that has made it a "best friend" in the hearts of young people born in the 1990s and 2000s.

As of September 2018, the number of daily active users of QQ Kandian has exceeded 100 million, and the proportion of those born after 1995 is close to 70%. As for the content in Kandian, its types are also all-encompassing. QQ will recommend content that users may be interested in based on their interests, thus meeting users' demand for content and enhancing the value of content.

Furthermore, the vertical development of content is inevitable, and the important thing is to directly touch the hearts of users. At present, vertical content such as e-sports, animation, live broadcast, and games are all favorites of young people. QQ's efforts in these aspects also add points to itself.

Penguin Esports leveraged the advantages of Tencent Games, carried the event live broadcast function, and launched self-made esports programs, which also received a good response. In November 2018, Penguin Esports released a set of data: Penguin Esports' average monthly viewing time reached 40 million hours, the number of broadcasts reached 5 million, the number of KOLs reached 1.8 million, and the total number of cumulative viewing users exceeded 300 million. At the same time, NOW Live brought high-quality video content to QQ with the "live broadcast +" model, thereby promoting the continuous content generation of UGC...

It is not difficult to see that QQ's layout in the social + content matrix is ​​to add luster to itself. For young users, this is also a more eye-catching innovation of QQ. But in fact, in Tencent's Q3 2018 financial report, we can see that the number of monthly active users of QQ has dropped by 4.8% compared with the same period.

In fact, while laying out its social content, QQ has also undergone several rounds of downsizing.

QQ's repeated slimming down symbolizes the end of an era?

QQ actually carries the memories of many young people born in the 1990s. However, in recent years, Tencent has trimmed the "branches" of QQ, cut off some once-hot businesses, and in disguisedly withdrawn users' opportunities to create memories. These signs invisibly hint at the end of an era.

Previously, Tencent launched WebQQ, which aims to provide users with convenience without downloading software. When users are on business trips, in airports, meeting rooms, or in any other scenarios, users only need to open the web page and log in to QQ to chat with friends, which greatly meets the social needs of users.

However, with the development of mobile smart devices, SmartQQ has gained the favor of the public with its convenience. Although WebQQ is still in normal use, its user activity will inevitably be affected by SmartQQ. It should be stated that the most recent slimming down of QQ was to shut down WebQQ, and this service was discontinued on January 1, 2019.

Many people must have used WebQQ over the years, but it is not as popular as before. For Tencent, the profitability of this business has not kept up, so this "leg" will naturally be cut off. Therefore, many netizens have posted articles expressing their feelings about the youth that was accompanied by WebQQ.

Speaking of youth, I believe that every QQ user has at least raised a "son" or "daughter" (QQ pet) in the past. In the process of raising pets, most pet owners have put a lot of thought into it, and they have arranged everything about their "children's" meals, entertainment, birthdays, weddings, etc.

It can be said that QQ pets are involved in the lives of most QQ users. However, on September 15, 2018, QQ pets left only one sentence "Master, goodbye forever" and became history, which made many users feel sad.

In addition to WebQQ and QQ Pets, QQ also closed QQ Home and Friends Network, but these projects left many users with their footprints and carried many good times, which can be regarded as symbols of an era. Today, QQ has torn down the symbols of that era one by one, indicating that the era is quietly leaving.

The weakening of QQ's user stickiness is not only due to the impact of these downsizing efforts, but also the impact of another major social software, WeChat, which cannot be ignored.

Has the impact of WeChat accelerated the aging of QQ?

In the past, the first choice for leaving someone’s contact information besides phone number was to ask for their QQ number, but now most people ask for their WeChat number. This small move shows the great impact of WeChat on QQ.

Compared with QQ, WeChat has simpler functions. In just 8 years, the number of monthly active users has exceeded 1 billion. It has to be admitted that WeChat has replaced QQ as the social software with the largest number of users in China a few years ago. You know, QQ cut some businesses and launched new businesses at the same time, but it is still in a relatively bloated state.

The more service functions QQ provides, the more confusing it is. When multiple functions are developed together, it is inevitable that they cannot be balanced, so the loss of user traffic is also reasonable. At this time, the emergence of WeChat, a simplified version of QQ, undoubtedly brought social networking back to its original state, making communication between people more pure. After all, QQ carries too many things.

Considering that WeChat and QQ are both Tencent's "sons", there is no reason for one to kill the other. Naturally, the father hopes that each son has a good "future". Since the simplicity and directness of social interaction have helped WeChat a lot in its growth, it may be more of an inspiration to QQ. Therefore, WeChat has an impact on QQ, but this impact will not necessarily cause it to age.

After all, there are some differences in the positioning of WeChat and QQ. Friends on WeChat are mostly parents, colleagues, and elders, while friends on QQ are mostly friends and classmates. From the comparison, it can be seen that QQ is more inclined to be younger and meets the appetite of young people.

As long as QQ can catch the preferences of young people, it is possible to return to the peak. But this does not mean that QQ should pile up all the current hot fields. Although this may produce good results at the beginning, it cannot guarantee that there will be no more slimming measures in the long run. It should be clear that every slimming of QQ will make some users feel lost, which will inevitably lead to the departure of some users.

As the social networking big brother, how will QQ deal with itself in the future?

How can QQ obtain the elixir of immortality?

No one can tell how long QQ will last. Maybe people will still be discussing QQ in ten years, or maybe QQ will face the crisis of closure in three years.

But at present, QQ still has hundreds of millions of people online at the same time every day, which means it still has a large number of loyal QQ users, so it will not disappear in the short term. It is an indisputable fact that there is a gap between the current QQ and the 1990s. In response to this, QQ has been adjusting its development strategy and has also taken some self-help measures.

Here, it must be said that those born after 1995 have become the main force of the Internet, which is in line with QQ's positioning. Since young people born after 1995 have a wide range of interests and hobbies, the layout of QQ's previous social entertainment content is not unreasonable. However, QQ needs to create its own uniqueness. If its series of youth-oriented products and services such as live broadcasting and e-sports are not much different from the functions of other vertical software, why would users buy it?

In other words, QQ can explore more new ways to play, such as short videos + red envelopes, live broadcasts + picture battles, etc., to catch the attention of young people with new interactive methods, thereby attracting them to participate. It is undeniable that continuous innovation is the best way to maintain the development of a product. As long as QQ catches the trends that young people like and incorporates them into existing functions, it can regain its vitality.

In addition, if QQ wants to retain its user base and prevent its close friends, WeChat or other "enemies", from snatching it away, it must adopt differentiated tactics.

Take red envelopes for example. This year, Internet giants such as Baidu and Toutiao launched a red envelope war during the Spring Festival, which led to different ways of playing with red envelopes. Among them, QQ also launched a lucky bag game during the Spring Festival, but this is only limited to a specific time point and its fermentation effect is also limited. Perhaps it can try to launch more ways to play such as face-to-face red envelopes, video call red envelopes, and lyrics red envelopes, which will provide a variety of red envelope social scenarios and bring more entertainment to users besides socializing.

When users use QQ, they can feel interested and happy, and their own needs are met, which is equivalent to giving users a reason to continue using it. It also means that they can get a pill of immortality.

There is a saying that the decline in popularity and user loss are the main reasons for the death of a product. As long as QQ continues to capture young people and innovate around their needs, it will be less confused in the future and strive to survive for another twenty years.