WeChat's year-end summary is here. Zhang Xiaolong talks about his original intention and insists on making a good tool that keeps pace with the times.

On the morning of January 9, the 2019 WeChat Open Course Pro officially opened, and Tencent’s official Weibo account released the 2018 WeChat Data Report, which showed the development of WeChat in recent years. At 7:30 p.m., Zhang Xiaolong appeared at the WeChat Night, and the venue was packed.

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After the opening, Zhang Xiaolong first talked about his views on products and the principles of product development. No matter what the outside world says, it will not affect his views on products. He believes that even if he says many things, the outside world will not understand them. Extending to the product, everyone has his own understanding in his heart.

On the basis of basic product principles, Zhang Xiaolong also talked about the initial "driving force" of WeChat's development. The first point is to insist on being a good tool that keeps pace with the times. In addition, Zhang Xiaolong also talked about that many companies are making mini-programs, but they do not pose a threat to WeChat. The decline in the number of public account readers is because the content is not attractive enough. He also announced several small changes to WeChat in the future.

The WeChat 2018 annual data report released this morning showed that as of September 2018, WeChat's monthly active users reached 1.082 billion, of which the number of users over the age of 55 reached 63 million, and the number of WeChat friends per user increased by 1.1 times compared with 2015.

The data report also gives the favorite emojis of different age groups. The favorite emoji of users born after 2000 is "covering face"; the favorite emoji of users born after 1990 is "crying and laughing"; the favorite emoji of users born after 1980 is "laughing with teeth showing"; the favorite emoji of users born after 1970 is "smirking with mouth covered"; and the favorite emoji of users aged 55 and above is "liking" emoji.

In terms of travel, the number of passengers using WeChat to take buses and subways increased by 4.7 times compared to last year, and the number of people using WeChat to travel by highway increased by 6.3 times compared to last year.

In terms of payment, the number of buyers using WeChat for retail consumption increased by 1.5 times compared to last year, the number of diners using WeChat to pay for meals increased by 1.7 times compared to last year, and the number of people using WeChat to pay for medical expenses increased by 2.9 times compared to last year.

In terms of information dissemination, WeChat sends 45 billion messages every day, an increase of 18% year-on-year; there are 4.1 successful audio calls every day, an increase of 100% year-on-year.

In addition, the number of users using WeChat video calls has increased by 570% compared to 2015. On this basis, more and more users over 55 years old are using WeChat video calls; three years ago, more users born in the 1990s and 2000s used this function.

Also released were the WeChat usage habits of users of different age groups. Users born in the 2000s are the most likely to go to bed late and get up early, they have the shortest sleep time, and they often become active after 10 p.m.; users born in the 1990s get up the latest during the day and travel by public transportation the most frequently; users born in the 1980s spend most of their daytime working time and like to follow national events on WeChat the most.

However, a common trend is that during the day, users spend more time on new behaviors such as playing small games and browsing Moments compared to three years ago.

As WeChat continues to strengthen its connections with industries, WeChat's data reports also show the frequency of users using WeChat in various industries. For example, the number of passengers using WeChat to take public transportation each month increased by 4.7 times year-on-year, and the number of users using WeChat for retail shopping each month increased by 1.5 times year-on-year.

"We are used to hearing this kind of voice every day," said Zhang Xiaolong, senior executive vice president of Tencent Group and president of WeChat Business Group. "Every day, 500 million people complain about our products, and 100 million people teach us how to make products. This is even more true after the WeChat 7.0 version update. However, if WeChat wants to keep up with the times, it must continue to make changes."

The following is Zhang Xiaolong’s speech: What kind of product is good?

Sometimes I really want to ask everyone, what kind of product is a good product? What kind of product is addictive or what kind of product is it?

For me, not many people understand my product concept. At that time, I also read a lot of product design concepts of Apple and Steve Jobs. They come from the top ten design concepts, including that good products are creative, useful, beautiful, easy to use, implicit, honest, long-lasting, not missing any details, environmentally friendly, and designed to experience as little as possible.

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For many people, it may be monetization or traffic. For example, can WeChat push some notifications, etc. But many people don’t care whether it is a good product. Is this why WeChat is like this? There are many things that people don’t understand? Why doesn’t WeChat design activities? I have explained it before, WeChat is not restrained.

I also observed that many products were misled about how to get traffic. Because many people also complained about this on WeChat. But WeChat insisted on how to make a good product. When I was on the PC side, I was thinking about how to make a good product like Microsoft. When I was on the mobile side, I was also thinking about the same problem.

Once, I asked a colleague, the page with the most page views is Google's or some other page? In fact, in the PC era, the most popular page is the browser's 404 page. If so, why doesn't Google put an ad on this page? Similarly, why doesn't WeChat put an ad on the startup page? In fact, you can ask this question.

WeChat has been around for 8 years. How much time do you spend on WeChat every day? If you spend a lot of time on it, then it is your friend. If you add an advertisement, you will find that there is an advertisement on the face of your best friend.

In fact, the new version has a lot of changes, and every time there are changes, many people will not adapt. In fact, if we follow the users' wishes, we can't change. Therefore, we can only adhere to the principle of good products and adapt to the changes of the times. In this part, I briefly explained the standards of good products and some of WeChat's weird concepts. It's not that we do this because we have a lot of users, we have insisted on this from the beginning.

The history of WeChat, Pony writing emails is true, let me review the history of WeChat. I wrote emails to Pony before, this is true. There is also a saying that I went to the temple, this does not exist. Sometimes I think, if I went out that day, there might be no WeChat. Now think about it, many things are sudden. Inspiration came, and WeChat appeared.

At that time, email had already become the number one, and there was nothing to break through. At that time, there was a reading space in the email. In this space, many ideas were actually tried. At the beginning, you could subscribe to some blogs and read articles. But the space of the reading space was limited.

At that time, we formed a team of 10 people, including me, people working on Android and Symbian, to create WeChat. At that time, the number of WeChat users was very small, and it remained very small for half a year. It is not easy to get users to accept a new product. But we insist that a product should not be promoted if it does not have a natural growth curve. If users do not promote it naturally, it is meaningless for us to promote it ourselves.

When 2.0 was released, we saw that WeChat users were growing, so we started to promote it. At the time, we were actually quite scared because WeChat had an impact on operators and replaced SMS. At the time, we didn’t dare to import friends from the address book, so we could only select friends from QQ.

Now we think that there are two things that are very right: one is to let users choose their own friends, and the other is not to promote the product excessively. In this way, WeChat has a very healthy start.

For me, I feel very lucky to be able to work with such a product, from 0 to 1, and now to 1 billion daily active users. At this point in time, I look back at the starting point of WeChat and my thoughts on various fields. Why is WeChat like this? What direction will it develop in the future?

What was WeChat’s original intention?

I have never mentioned the word "original intention". I will replace it with "original motivation". Original motivation is the deep inner cognition that can be persisted for a long time and overcome many difficulties to complete it. It is also a goal that one really wants to achieve. The original motivation of WeChat can be summarized in two points:

First, as a tool, WeChat hopes to become a product that keeps pace with the times. Although I have talked about tools many times, many people still don’t quite understand. I love tools very much. At that time, I wrote Foxmail with code. The starting point of WeChat was also to make a very useful tool. Tools are already a very challenging and difficult thing to do.

Many people don't think so now. This is related to our users. Many people are used to the bad user experience. Because many people are used to it, such as those opening screen ads, misleading links, etc. In the past, there were actually a lot of spam text messages. The scary thing is that many people think this is normal.

When we know what is good, we will have a bottom line and make choices. Therefore, we will insist on making a good tool.

What is keeping up with the times? WeChat has a slogan, WeChat is a lifestyle. When we do this, my intuition tells me that this will make users remember it. WeChat is a communication tool. There are many friends here, which will affect their lifestyle. At that time, WeChat made a lot of changes. This was a breakthrough in trends and lifestyles. When the people nearby were released, I was particularly scared because no product had this function, and I didn’t know what changes would be brought about. But from another perspective, WeChat is on the mobile phone side, and it will inevitably run through people’s lives. I am also very fortunate that I put forward such a slogan at that time. Later, I found that WeChat has indeed penetrated into people’s lives, such as payment and red envelopes.

So, WeChat is a life tool.

I won’t talk about it for now, what is the second driving force?

WeChat public platform was launched in the second year after WeChat was launched. At that time, I was thinking that WeChat could do more. The emergence of WeChat replaced SMS. If we had a way to avoid spam messages and make information acquisition more orderly, I remember that I was very excited and told Pony about it. He said, what about spam messages?

We created the public platform for this reason. If we don't do this, it will be like the text messages of the past, with a lot of spam. A platform can benefit many people, then it will be more vital.

At that time, we cited many cases, such as how to let customers find a blind masseur and get good service. The masseur is not based on the location, but on the level of his massage. Therefore, there is a slogan like "No matter how small the individual is, he has his own brand".

The purpose of our platform is to let people who create value show their value. The mini-programs and mini-games we developed later were based on this purpose. So, in the first two months of this year, a friend posted on WeChat Moments that now all masseurs use mini-program tools. I was very happy to see this case. This is what we envisioned at the beginning.

If you understand our starting point, you will better understand the various initiatives mentioned in today's open class.

At present, I don’t understand the concepts of many products on the market. Everyone is competing for the user’s usage time. Because the user’s time is limited. And Internet products are designed to improve efficiency.

WeChat does not have functions such as "sent" and "read". This is because we originally thought that the most efficient way is to not look at the message after sending it. If we check whether it has been sent or read again, it means wasting time. The most efficient way is to provide users with valuable information. Even for TV series, many of our colleagues watch them at double the speed.

We don't measure the value of a product based on the user's stay time. A person's time is limited, and it doesn't mean that you have to use a product all the time except for eating, drinking, defecating and urinating. What we care more about is that users can find information in the shortest possible time. For example, sometimes you can't remember a certain person. We prefer to strengthen the ability to associate with related people.

Many companies are developing mini-apps, which do not pose a threat to WeChat

Next, I want to talk about mini programs.

Now many companies are developing mini programs, and we are very happy about it. We are not worried about competition or threats to us. Because each company has a different team and personality, and more importantly, what is the driving force behind doing this. If it is just for traffic, then I am not optimistic.

Our mini-programs are designed to create value. We are decentralized. If we monopolize the top mini-programs, then the ecosystem will be gone. Even companies invested by Tencent must follow these rules. Previously, there was indeed a company that wanted to make mini-games, but was afraid that we would destroy them. But we will not do that. We treat our invested companies and other companies equally.

Now, let's take a brief look back at the development of mini programs. It has been three years. In fact, we couldn't launch it before we had thought it through. This is not WeChat's style. Doing this is to put pressure on ourselves and push us to do this well. One year, I said we would launch the mini program service. At that time, we were discussing how the mini program would die. Without discussion, mini programs are so wonderful.

Why do we think that we will definitely do a good job with mini programs? We have said it many times before. The experience of app downloads and web pages is not good, and the experience of mini programs is the best. In fact, the experience of public accounts is better than that of web pages because we have added a lot of design to them. From the user's perspective, this experience will be better.

We are very determined to use mini programs. Because it is not a C-end product, we can test it quickly. And we are very patient. We have been working hard to do this for the past three years. We hope that mini programs are valuable and users will use them. Even today, we cannot say that mini programs have been done very well. However, we have seen many good cases. Because it is not perfect yet, we still have a lot to do. Online, mini programs should be obtained through search and social networking; offline, it should be QR codes. At present, search is not very good. We hope to present a lot of information directly to users through the mini program page. Although it is not done yet, we have achieved certain results internally.

In addition, we need to improve the evaluation system of the mini program. It is best to have evaluations from friends who have used it.

The third point is the situation of mini-program retrieval. Just now, a user complained that mini-programs can be recommended. Although everything is possible, some things cannot be done. When all mini-programs start to send notifications, the experience will be bad, just like the spam text messages of the past. It is possible that you will receive hundreds of notifications every day, and the good mini-programs will be drowned out. This is not a good solution.

We hope that we can send notifications to users if they accept it. Although we have download and star entrances, I think there is still a lot of room for optimization. There are indeed users who want to use the mini program but can't find it.

WeChat 7.0 has a strong reminder, which many people may not use, thinking it is only for personal use. In fact, it is not the case. We do this for offline use. For example, if I scan a QR code, I will receive a reminder. The original intention of the strong reminder is to solve offline problems. I think the connection between mini programs and individuals is still an unresolved issue, and I will strengthen it later. Mini programs are very profitable, but I am not very satisfied with them yet.

Next, let’s talk about mini-games.

From a business perspective, mini games are doing very well now. However, I am not very satisfied with them personally because there are not that many high-quality games. Back to the origin, what is the goal of mini games? In fact, the company does not put pressure on us to generate revenue. So, why do we make mini games? Where will mini games go?

Internally, I said that mini games are a platform for creativity. What is creativity? Our understanding of mini games is different from that of the outside world. Outsiders think that many games become mini games when they are put into mini programs. In fact, it is not like that. Mini games are not "Everyday Elimination". Mini games are a carrier that can carry various creative ideas. For some users, writing novels can no longer carry their creativity, so they can use mini programs. For example, a primary school student can also develop a mini program and provide it to his classmates.

So, I told our team that we don’t want to see only the revenue growth, but how many new ideas there are and how many people have never made games. Because people who make games have many limited ideas. When our platform is full of creativity, it will become very valuable and more users will use it. Of course, it is still difficult to achieve this goal.

This is about mini-games, and our thinking from the perspective of the platform. I hope that the mini-games we see in the future will be refreshing or a technical experience.

The number of readers of public accounts has decreased because the content is not attractive enough

The next point is about the official account. Many people are very concerned about the official account because they are starting a business through it.

Some people think that the benefits of public accounts have disappeared. In fact, I want to say that the public platform is not prepared for everyone. However, we still want to serve everyone well. Including, take a look at what is good inside.

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Looking back at the development of public accounts, many people have indeed used such an entrance to gain a lot of fans. In the earliest public courses, I shared data, and 70% to 80% of the reading volume came from WeChat Moments. I think this is very good, because 20% of people are selecting information, and 80% of people are reading it. Now the sharing data has decreased, which may be due to the diversification of content sources and the decline in quality.

We have also analyzed it internally. We found that it is not a revision, but a revision to improve efficiency. A big reason is whether the content is attractive to users. We believe that in terms of the attractiveness of the content, we need to change it instead of constantly revising it.

In the era of blogs, articles written by good bloggers have a larger readership. It seems that there are fewer public accounts now than there were bloggers back then. Therefore, we should encourage more people to produce high-quality content. Recently, we have cracked down on plagiarism in order to protect high-quality content. Therefore, encouraging the production of high-quality content is a big issue facing WeChat. For example, the production of video content. Last year, we released the App. The reason for the delay was that we hoped that many people would join in and produce content. But it was not done well.

Social needs have not changed much

Another is social communication. In the early days of WeChat, most people used sharing. This is a good distribution ratio. Next, I will talk about social communication and social reading.

We haven't talked about the most technical aspects of WeChat. WeChat is a social tool. Everyone has their own understanding of social interaction.

What is the origin of social interaction? There is no standard answer to this. My imagination is that a long time ago, individuals did not socialize, and then groups developed social interactions. When a person is in a group, the biggest wish is not to be excluded. So, what should he say? He must say something valuable, even a little exaggerated. For example, some people will post some exaggerated travel photos.

I once pondered a question in Zhihu: What is the essence of communication? There is no standard answer, but I found an answer, which is the process of imposing a persona on others. In fact, the persona you think of is different from the persona others understand. This makes it easier for me to understand social imagination. If you guide it this way, actually posting to Moments is sending your own persona to others. In fact, you are promoting your persona, and you will carefully select and post it.

Many people will also ask a question, why can only photos be posted on Moments, but not text? Because if you want to promote your personality, pictures are more conducive to dissemination, while text is very difficult. When I think of this, I will not post messages on social platforms. This will also bring negative effects. For example, if you post travel content a few times, people will think that you travel most of the year. But these contents cannot reflect your true situation, sometimes looking back.

What we see in Moments is actually the best status of others. However, we don’t have a tool to record everyone’s truest status.

So, we launched Moment Video, and later we changed it to Moment Dynamics. There are many good names like Scan in WeChat. But when describing Moment Video, I thought a lot.

I can describe more about Moments. Many people may see that everyone is fleeing Moments. In fact, the real situation is not like this. This is the situation of a small circle. Moments have been released for 6 or 7 years. The number of people entering Moments every day has been increasing. Now it is 750 million people, 10 billion times a day. Some people will complete social interaction by liking and commenting. Even if you don’t post Moments, you will check it. Therefore, there are so many people checking Moments every day.

Even if the environment has changed, why do so many people still check their Moments? Product managers here can think about this.

In fact, the social needs have not changed much. What is offline, will be the same online. The essence of Moments is to create a new social scene, not just a time stream. It is a square, so you will walk through the square every day and see groups of people in different places in the square. You can participate or not. When you walk through the square, you see what they are doing and say hello to them.

In Moments, you can only see common friends. The interaction between two or three people is not one-to-one. People flee because personal behavior is public. If you shout in the square, everyone can hear you, which will gradually bring you pressure. We are also thinking that when the social pressure in Moments is getting greater and greater, a more relaxed scene is needed. When a person speaks to himself, there is no pressure, but this will not get feedback. For this reason, some people set Moments to be visible for three days.

Why is it set like this?

As a switch in the product settings, few people use it, but this switch is the most used. 100 million people used it in three days. This is also reasonable for the product. For example, if you re-create the Moments, you can set it to private or put it in the album. These were originally two functions, but they were put together at the beginning. In this way, Moments and albums are actually two concepts, but they were accidentally mixed together.

In the next few years, Moments will still be the most efficient social platform. However, many people may still need a more relaxed way.

Like for real content

A question that comes up is that we need to keep the status quo. This does not mean that WeChat will focus on video. Because video is a technology, and WeChat is a social network. In fact, the videos in WeChat chats and Moments have always been very large. This is to make up for the shortcomings of Moments. Even without videos, we will think of a new way of socializing.

I think Twitter is a great product that has influenced the form of many subsequent products, such as Weibo. I remember when Weibo was launched, Tencent also launched Weibo. When you write a Weibo post, there will be a prompt to tell you what you are doing and what you are thinking.

On the mobile side, there is a shake function, because you don't understand computers. I have said before that people are reactors to the environment. When you sit in front of a computer, the computer is your environment. When you get a mobile phone, you record the real situation. What you are doing, not what you imagine.

The purpose of WeChat videos is to record the interaction between users and the real environment. This was not possible in the PC era. Recording the real world is an ideal, but it is not realistic. In fact, we don’t have that many videos on our phones. Recording and shooting are not actually a need. Shooting videos only becomes meaningful when you are socializing. WeChat has such capabilities, but WeChat will not record videos or make a video album.

What we want to do is to allow a person to truly record what he is really experiencing, and his friends can see it, but this is different from the circle of friends. Now it is 1.0, but we have the patience to cultivate user habits.

A few days ago, a friend asked me why the video disappeared after one day. He misunderstood. This is not a record, but the opposite of Moments. The dynamics of the moment reflect the real situation. Therefore, the words "that's it" are displayed where the video is posted. I can't say this to every user. But we hope that users can do this with enough motivation and freedom. Many people here don't have motivation. But we can definitely give everyone motivation, such as sending red envelopes.

We will continue to upgrade it. Moments is the opposite of Moments, which is already a traditional social network. This requires patience and gradual advancement. Why are we patient? Because we do think that although users do not have so many demands now, video communication will replace pictures in the future because it contains more information.

A few days ago, I liked a moment video for a friend. He posted it on WeChat Moments. What I want to say is that I liked it because the content was real, not because it was beautified. In fact, the video can also be seen by people other than friends, which is what another product is designed to do, so I won’t go into details here.

Social recommendation is an attempt to create a mass reading product

The next topic I want to talk about is my thoughts on reading.

When WeChat does something, it is always interpreted by others as a competition. We don’t make videos because we want to compete with others. We create public accounts so that users can see more high-quality content. It is very difficult to make a popular reading product because people are unwilling to learn by nature. At that time, we did reading in the mailbox, and it worked well for us, but it was still used by a small number of people.

Since the beginning of WeChat, articles can be shared to Moments. The 80/20 rule I mentioned is in line with this rule: some people select content, and most people read it. In other words, Moments is a place to promote your image, not a place to read. Even if you share, it is an article that fits your image.

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In recent years, the sharing from Moments has become less and less. When there are more and more friends, the priority of pictures sent by friends is higher than articles. And reading articles requires a fixed time. Just like the box of our subscription account, it has a red dot but is useless most of the time. So for reading, a fixed time is required.

In addition to the circle of friends, we need to open up a place for reading, which is Kanyikan. Currently, Kanyikan has two sections, Good-looking and Recommended. These are two directions, one is social and the other is machine recommendation. Machine recommendation has actually encountered a bottleneck, so we can only try the social recommendation route.

What kind of road is this? In recent years, most of the books I read were recommended by friends because they endorsed them. Similarly, because I trust my friends, I watch the movies they recommend. Therefore, my understanding of recommendations is that they are increasingly becoming a factor in helping decision-making. The interesting thing about social recommendations is that it is a system that can be continuously circulated internally. For example, if a machine recommendation goes astray, it will continue to go in this direction, and it will be difficult to come back at this time. Social relationships can help correct the deviation, which is a more balanced system.

When I thought about making a popular reading product, I thought of social recommendation. This is not just reading, but a continuation of social interaction. People will read because of social interaction. People will care about the content in the social system. The current progress is in line with our expectations, but we are still very conservative because this is a process of constantly involving users.

There are many obstacles here that we need to overcome. For example, in order to strengthen the personal image, users recommend the same content. But we are not particularly worried about this. Because people's social relationships are complex, users will see content from friends in different circles and different positions. Because the content is viewed by friends and familiar people, we will look at content outside of our interests and may open some interest windows.

Moments are for individuals to forward, while Kankan is for articles. Kankan is currently the first generation version, and although it is a bit rough, we will continue to iterate and optimize it.

Don’t label information flow, AI also serves products

The next point is about information flow.

After I talked about information flow last time, a lot of misunderstandings arose. I don’t like the industry to label many things. For example, scrolling down the content is information flow. I don’t like this kind of labeling cognition. In this way, the circle of friends is also information flow. I don’t want to define it with labels. Making videos is for users to show themselves. If it is not video, we will also look for other carriers.

Let me talk about AI. WeChat has an AI soundtrack, which many people think matches the content of the user's photo. In fact, in addition to the real match, it is more about the image level. We are not going to do AI in a fanciful way, but we want to land it in the actual scene. In fact, we are also working on another AI function internally, but I won't talk about it.

We believe that good technology serves products and should be hidden behind the scenes. When AI is used in products, we should think about what it brings to us. Through learning, AI doctors may replace human doctors. However, AI doctors may give wrong instructions and prescribe wrong prescriptions.

Traditional tools are controlled by people. How does Apple define tools? Jobs explained that computers are tools similar to bicycles, which are an extension of human capabilities. AI is also a tool. For example, AI doctors can recommend what medicine to take and how to lose weight. This kind of tool goes beyond the traditional scope and even starts to control people. We have many concerns about a tool that can control people.

Isn’t our goal to get clicks? Why should we think beyond the product?

Many people talk about users, and they seem very distant and unfamiliar. In fact, we should stand in the user's perspective.

Finally, I want to clarify a joke I made before, which is about kindness. I don't want it to become a joke and spread. Every sentence actually has a background. I told my employees at the time that we should be kind to users, not trick them. This is not kindness in a moral sense, but an attitude towards users. Employees who can enter our company are smart enough. What they lack is not intelligence, but an attitude.

Small changes in WeChat's future

Here I would like to mention a few points that not everyone knows about red envelopes.

• The first small change is that during the Spring Festival, we will launch a function on WeChat for Business, which is a red envelope skin.
• The second small change is that there is still room for improvement in red envelopes. Red envelopes have become naked money, and more emotional elements can be added, such as emoticons. We actually made a very good function, which is the relative card. When we consume, we feel that we are fulfilling our filial piety.

The card wallet in WeChat is not well made. We originally wanted to carry many card functions, but it was not good enough. At present, we still want to make more attempts.

If WeChat for Business is a communication tool within the enterprise, then its scope is very limited. What I want to say here is that WeChat for Business is trying a new direction, people are services. For example, many couriers have been added to WeChat, but I still don’t know who to contact next time; another example is WeChat business, the reason why WeChat business exists is that the transaction is endorsed by social relationships. This makes WeChat for Business think that people can be treated as a resource and a service and provided.