After another year of tinkering, what is the dilemma facing WeChat Mini Programs?

WeChat Mini Programs have launched games, but a year ago, the WeChat team vowed that they would not make games. Zhang Xiaolong said that the daily active users of the Jump Jump Mini Program have reached 170 million. In other words, WeChat only had the courage to disclose data after launching mini games.

Of course, everyone has broken their promises, such as Jack Ma who said he would never make games. However, when the mini program opens the game interface, it means that the mini program has come to an end. Some people say it has graduated or dropped out. In any case, the mini program has deviated from its original intention.

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WeChat Mini Programs have been constantly evolving this year, offering a wide range of functions, constantly adjusting their capabilities, and launching new applications, but they are still only popular in terms of publicity.

If mini programs can still be saved, it can only be because of Tencent. For most Internet applications, listing determines success or failure, and even if Tencent uses all its strength to promote it, it will be difficult.

Why does Tencent want to develop mini programs? Basically, there are several main reasons.

First, Tencent’s business is mainly based on games. Although it has made a lot of efforts, the results are not good. If it cannot get rid of this development model, facing the output value of China’s game industry of about 300 billion, the ceiling will be an insurmountable obstacle for Tencent, and it is inevitable that it will be overtaken by Alibaba in the future. Therefore, Tencent hopes to connect everything with mini programs, and the most important thing is to develop other businesses to expand its living space.

Second, Tencent's capabilities are mainly reflected in the online business. As long as the business is purely online, it will develop well. Otherwise, it will fail. To change this situation, new tools are needed. Based on WeChat and QR codes, mini programs may become the connector between online and offline, which is the most important thing for Tencent.

Third, although it is called "Mini Program", it is actually Tencent that is making the application heavy. WeChat itself started as a light application and occupied the mobile client, so being too heavy has always been a concern of the WeChat management team. However, with the arrival of the era of abundant traffic, heavy applications are no longer a problem. Moreover, the development of mobile Internet in recent years has proved that the Internet approach of expanding scale and scope and then looking for business models is not successful on the mobile side. The only way out is to make the application heavy and design payment in the application. WeChat must also take this path.

Therefore, the original design of the mini program is to use it and leave it, simple and clear, so that it can involve the whole society more, rather than indulging in individual hot spots.

Essentially, mini programs carry Tencent's offline dreams. Today, mini programs that were originally intended to attract traffic to WeChat have now become WeChat-dependent. This was not Tencent's original intention, and now even the original intention has been changed, just to maintain public expectations and capital stories.

We have seen that the mini-programs that were meant to connect online and offline for WeChat have become popular for their online functions, such as Tencent’s own “King of Glory Mini-program”, “Tencent Voting”, “Group Events”, and some popular mini-programs based on social networking, such as “Anonymous Chat”, and e-commerce mini-programs based on friend sharing, such as “Pinduoduo”, etc. If we have to pick an online and offline mini-program, it would probably be Mobike, which is still stuck in a life-and-death battle, lagging behind in many indicators, and its survival is uncertain.

From the perspective of communication, WeChat, which is a lightweight application with a heavy user terminal, is a form of pipelining. WeChat has made operators pipelining, and then WeChat itself has also become pipelining, which is what Tencent least wants to see. WeChat neither dares nor has the ability to make the client lighter, and it is afraid that it will become the last straw if it actively makes it heavier. Therefore, mini programs have taken many proactive lightweight measures. This is a trial and error process. If it can bear it, the mini program will gradually become heavier, otherwise it will fade out and exit.

Mini Programs do not utilize WeChat traffic, but only utilize WeChat's installed base. They also have to bear the task of pulling traffic for WeChat. Many people only see the large amount of WeChat traffic, but ignore that the majority of WeChat traffic is junk traffic. The monetization value of WeChat's unit traffic is extremely low. Starting from WeChat's phone book, WeChat has been looking for ways to increase the value of traffic. There have been successes and failures, but overall, it is not ideal. Recently, WeChat has begun to actively test Internet phone calls. This is actually a fight for the cake of operators in the case of helpless pipelining.

So, why is it that even with all of Tencent's resources pushing mini programs to the utmost, mini programs still have poor results? This is because mini programs essentially go against the philosophy that made Tencent successful. They no longer focus on the user's product experience, but instead provide a wide range of functions centered on their own commercial purposes. This requires Alibaba's strong operational thinking, which is what Tencent lacks the most.

Previously, all of Tencent’s successful businesses were about making the product perfect and then using its powerful social media traffic to attract users. However, mini programs are an exception. They have been attracting users and then changing product features and functions based on their reactions.

Some professionals pointed out that despite the constant controversy, WeChat's determination to promote mini-programs has not wavered at all: opening the "Search" entrance, Ma Huateng personally supporting the ride-hailing code, attracting big brands such as Starbucks, and launching credit points are all actions to promote mini-programs. The last time WeChat put so much effort into a product was probably when WeChat Pay was launched. Despite such efforts, mini-programs are still sluggish.

In a word, "Mini Programs are not fun", which is fatal to Tencent products that started out as games. Therefore, there is no need to analyze the addition of audio and video, games, etc. The same is true for the next step of adding VR and AI. It is just forcibly using a ventilator to maintain the life of the Mini Program.

Well, since it's not fun, there's no way out. So, isn't it fun to just go straight to the game? However, if WeChat or WeChat mini-programs go directly to the game, isn't that equivalent to turning WeChat into QQ, making Tencent more determined on the path of gamification. The so-called big connection becomes a game link, which is completely different from the previous design.