Tencent architect Xiong Pujiang: WeChat's success is not accidental

So far, WeChat has nearly 600 million monthly active users. It is one of the must-have apps for smartphones, the most popular communication app, and has become a product that affects our lifestyle. Surveys show that 25% of WeChat users open WeChat more than 30 times a day, and 55.2% of WeChat users open WeChat more than 10 times a day. What is the reason that makes WeChat an indispensable communication app for us? For this reason, we interviewed Xiong Pujiang, a Tencent architect and guest speaker at the WOT2016 Internet Operation and Developer Summit.

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He is currently the architect of Tencent WeChat, responsible for the company's business resource planning and technical architecture review. He has been involved in the Internet since 1997 and has served in technology and Internet companies such as Supreme, Pacific Networks, and PPTV in the United States as network operations director and operations director. He joined Tencent in 2012. With more than 18 years of Internet experience, he has rich experience in large-scale network architecture planning and construction, massive user platform planning and operation technology support, ultra-large-scale business resource planning and technical architecture management optimization.

Why can we still get red envelopes when the network pressure is so great during the Spring Festival?

The red envelope wave started by WeChat has attracted cooperation from major mainstream media, and various social platforms have also launched their own red envelope strategies. However, facing the network pressure caused by the Spring Festival, a major festival, why can we still grab red envelopes?

Xiong Pujiang said that WeChat can support two things. The first is that there are enough resources, including servers and bandwidth resources, to support a relatively high volume, but WeChat also pays attention to a balance, not only from the company's cost or resources as the starting point, but also from a practical point of view, users cannot use a lot of resources in a short period of time, at this time WeChat will consider another thing, that is, the architecture's audit support capabilities. All architectures in WeChat support audit services, which is a point that WeChat emphasizes very much, but for high-concurrency scenarios, audit services may be temporarily closed to ensure service quality.

Signal interference and frequent signal conversion between 3G, 4G and WiFi can lead to unstable signals. WeChat has implemented some cacheable features on the mobile phone side and conducted in-depth research on wireless protocols to streamline WeChat transmission, so as to ensure that users can send messages to Moments or red envelopes quickly and stably.

Why is there still a lot of remaining data when sending voice messages using WeChat?

Nowadays, so many APPs require internet access to be used, and data charges are relatively expensive. Many people choose to turn on data monitoring, but they find that not much data is used when sending voice messages using WeChat. Why is this?

Xiong Pujiang told me: "WeChat considers the user's traffic problem first, and our own costs second." WeChat monitors traffic and streamlines, compresses and transmits data.

Nowadays, many users will enter an endless loop at some stage and continue to access the same data. This phenomenon is called "stealing traffic".

WeChat is very meticulous in monitoring this aspect. It can monitor all changes or abnormal data within one minute. If the user makes repeated requests, WeChat will consider it an abnormal request and close it. Even the client has such logic. WeChat will judge the amount of traffic it has engaged in, for example, it will temporarily stop if it reaches 3 times. Various logic optimizations and some technical means ensure that user traffic is worthwhile, or used where it should be used.

Why has WeChat become a mainstream communication software?

There are many instant messaging applications, and there are many emerging apps, but many of them have been abandoned. However, when people are asked to leave their contact information, the most common question is "Can I add you on WeChat?" WeChat has not only not been abandoned, but has stood firm and become another milestone in instant messaging applications. With such a high user experience, what other advantages does WeChat have to improve its product value from the user's perspective?

WeChat has been optimizing the performance of Moments. For example, when posting pictures in Moments, WeChat will set different picture quality according to the user's network, so that users can upload faster and access faster. In terms of picture specifications, WeChat found that the JPG format used previously stored more bytes, so it cited better technologies such as Web P and HEVC. These two formats are more efficient than traditional picture encoding and can help users save more than 40% of traffic.

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WeChat is more concerned about efficiency for users. In other words, WeChat pays great attention to the user experience. From the interview, it can be seen that WeChat is very serious about the instant messaging product, and is also expanding the scope of the enterprise. Paying attention to user experience is an important factor in WeChat's success.

To borrow Xiong Pujiang's words, "WeChat is a tool that helps people communicate more conveniently."