Written by | Lee Shin Ma
Edit | Yang Bocheng
On January 6, 2022, the WeChat team's annual WeChat Open Class PRO edition kicked off in Guangzhou.
Eleven years ago, on January 21, 2011, The WeChat 1.0 version was released and gradually grew into an important carrier of China's national applications and Internet life, and every upgrade of WeChat since then has also affected the lives of hundreds of millions of people. At the main forum of this year, WeChat introduced the latest progress of five major businesses such as video number, WeChat payment, mini program, search and search, and enterprise WeChat, and DoNews also sorted out and summarized it for the first time to entertain readers.
Video number: Let more people produce content, let the people who produce content get rewarded
A few weeks ago, the West side boys' online concert attracted 20 million views, and the PCU (the highest simultaneous online) reached 1.5 million, enough to fill 15 bird's nests. On January 19, 2020, the video number opened the internal test, and WeChat's definition of the video number is: a platform that everyone can record and create, and it is also a window to understand others and understand the world. "In the first year, we basically built the framework of the whole product; in the second year, we tried to establish our own content operation direction and content operation method." WeChat open class video number lecturer said.
At the 2022 WeChat Open Class PRO, the video number announced the growth and changes in the past year, including consumption growth, ability release, encouraged content, and author incentives.
In terms of content consumption, the video number is frequently exploded, the content with more than one million likes is emerging in an endless stream, the number of viewers of hot live broadcasts such as the launch of Shenzhou 12 and the return of Meng Wanzhou has repeatedly reached a new high, and the video number has become a new platform for users to browse news events and experience leisure and entertainment. The release of capacity is reflected in the combination and opening up of ecosystems.
In the WeChat content ecology, the video number is the "atomized basic content component", which can be freely combined with other atomic components and produce chemical reactions, through integration and connection with WeChat pay, enterprise WeChat and other products, so that creators have the ability to operate private domains.
In the future, the video number will encourage pyrotechnic and live-action original content, including videos and live broadcasts such as life tips, pan-entertainment, and pan-information. The video number also launched the "Creator Incentive Plan" to provide traffic tilt for original content, so that 10 million original authors have traffic, promote 1 million high-quality creators to have income, and further improve the growth system of content creators.
"Next, we will continue to try to build a more robust stage, let more people come up and produce content, let more users get the content they want here, create more user value, and let the people who provide content get rewards by creating value, which is something we will focus on in the next year."
WeChat Pay: At the end of 2021, compared with the beginning of the year, the amount of large defrauded funds dropped by 90%
Zhang Ying, an open class instructor at WeChat Pay, was a "veteran" who joined Tencent in 2002 and shared four stories and four sets of data.
The first story was one night in early 2016, when Zhang Xiaolong told him that Tencent had decided to hand over WeChat Pay to him. When asked what the goal of WeChat Pay is, Zhang Ying replied that "to do 100 million a day", Zhang Xiaolong said: "It is completely wrong." After that, Zhang Xiaolong gave him a deep impression on the answer - "Our goal is to make WeChat Pay a habit of WeChat users and a part of their lives."
This was originally like an "impossible task", but an open ecosystem makes the impossible possible. This is the first set of data, WeChat Pay has about 1,200 employees, but there are 23,000 monthly active service providers, 1,800+ banks and payment institutions and 1 million + ecological partners, more than 1 million ecological practitioners, partners bring 97% of offline transaction volume, this is the power of ecological openness.
The second story is about the digitization of paper coupons. In the past few years, WeChat Pay has been committed to the digital operation of merchants, but this matter is very difficult, to become a digital acquisition, but also to solve a series of digital upgrade problems such as coupon issuance, write-off, reconciliation and so on. Through cooperation with ecological partners, more than 10 million merchants are large and medium-sized merchants and the WeChat payment card coupon system has been connected, completing 22.9 billion yuan of actual write-off discounts and leveraging 520 billion yuan of social consumption.
The third story is related to small and micro merchants. In the past few years, WeChat Pay has issued 50 million + collection code cards, 11 million collection audios, a simple SaaS platform "small ledger", 48 million small merchants come to visit mini programs every month for reconciliation and other management, in addition to 45 million + collection gift users, 22 million + business protection insurance. WeChat Pay's small and micro merchant business has always been in a state of loss, but Zhang Ying said that in the next three years, more than 10 billion yuan of subsidies will be planned to help small and micro merchants further digital upgrade.
Starting from the second half of 2019, WeChat Pay and other teams in Tencent have made reminders from suspicious transactions, hoping that "there is no deception in the world". At the end of 2021, compared to the beginning of the year, the amount of money that was largely defrauded fell by 90%, "which is probably the proudest thing in 2021".
WeChat Pay scores, which are originally designed to reduce transaction friction, have been opened by more than 50% of users, have more than 3,000 industry solutions, and reduce transaction friction by 250 billion yuan in the collateral-free industry, and will be applied to more scenarios.
The last story is a private story about a noodle restaurant in Hangzhou that offers free noodles to those in need.
In 2021, thousands of companies and stores will work with WeChat to provide sanitation workers with a penny package, and the rest will be borne by WeChat and well-meaning users and enterprises. Thinking of being able to help others makes me feel particularly satisfied, Zhang Ying said.
Mini Programs: More than 450 million people use Mini Programs every day
In 3 days, the Mini Program will celebrate its fifth anniversary. In 2017, also on the stage of the WeChat open class, Zhang Xiaolong officially released the WeChat Mini Program and put forward the direction and goal of "within reach and everywhere", and now, the Mini Program is really everywhere in life.
In 2021, more than 450 million people use Mini Programs every day, the average number of daily usage increased by 32% compared with 2020, the number of paying users of Mini Programs increased by 80%, and the unit price of customers increased significantly. Under the epidemic, more than 700 million users have used Mini Programs to enjoy medical services; 750 million users have used the collaborative tools of Mini Programs; and on average, more than 100 million users use government services on Mini Programs every day.
The data shows that in 2021, the transaction volume of mini programs in the retail, tourism and catering industries increased by more than 100% year-on-year, the number of mini programs with transactions increased by 28% year-on-year, and users gradually became accustomed to living and consuming on mini programs, especially young users grew particularly fast, and middle-aged and elderly groups also had specific favorite types.
The number of active Mini Programs is also growing steadily, an increase of 40% compared with 2020, with transactional Mini Programs growing by nearly 30%, and 90% of the growth comes from small and medium-sized merchants. The number of Mini Program developers has exceeded 3 million, compared with 2020, with the upgrading of advertising capabilities, in 2021, the scale of Mini Programs to promote the main realization of traffic has increased by more than 90% year-on-year, and the share of WeChat advertising to Mini Program developers is close to 10 billion.
Mini Programs are also constantly improving the level of commercialization in the industry. Represented by the catering industry, with the help of scanning code ordering, pre-ordering, Mini Program takeaway and other models, Mini Programs continue to extend the service radius of merchant stores and bring incremental income. In 2021, the average daily use of catering merchant Mini Programs will reach the level of tens of millions, and the repurchase rate will reach 3 times that of the industry market.
More and more brand merchants combine stores and mini programs to improve the repurchase rate of goods through shopping guide recommendation and store delivery mode, and more than 30% of fashion store mini program transactions come from their own shopping guides and offline stores. In addition, the brand is further connected with the terminal, and the B2b mini program helps the brand connect more than one million terminal stores and reduce marketing costs.
Search: Use WeChat to search all
Initially, search is only an entrance on the main interface of The WeChat session, the earliest Version of WeChat, can only search the local chat history, as well as the contact information in the address book, and does not have the real search ability.
However, with the continuous development of the WeChat ecology, Souyisou has also increased the ability of network search, and has been continuously improved, which has been able to cover the search needs of the vast majority of users. Now, search has become a search that every WeChat user can use at any time. Souyisou connects WeChat ecological content producers and service providers, and also connects the majority of users, providing users with one-stop search and problem solutions.
Up to now, the monthly active users of Souyisou have exceeded 700 million, up 20% from the previous year. At the WeChat Open Class PRO, Zhou Hao, vice president of Tencent and head of WeChat Soysou, said: "On the one hand, we continue to understand and synthesize massive content to accurately match users, on the other hand, Souyisou also helps content creators, service providers and brand owners better connect to the ecology and users. ”
The goal of SouYisou is driven by user needs, so the goal of continuous optimization of Souyisou is to "use WeChat to search everything". It not only includes the "content" produced within the WeChat system, but also includes the content generated outside the ecology, but accessed to the ecological mass. For example, what does it mean to query the Internet buzzword - YYDS? The content of the Chicken Dictionary in this regard is accessed to the Ecology of WeChat through the contact points of the Mini Program, and after optimization, the user terminal and the B-side are satisfied, and the demand for search under this category has increased by 139%, and it has also contributed 68% of the daily active users to the Mini Program.
In the next step, Sou Yisou will continue to understand and excavate the distinctive, high-quality content and services in the WeChat ecosystem, and display these contents and services and accurately and directly to users. At present, Soisou has supported more than 5,100 official registrations of public hospitals, with a cumulative number of more than 100 million people.
Further, in order to connect the services in the WeChat ecosystem to users with accurate and high quality, Souyisou will optimize the evaluation of service availability and quality. For example, the brand official area is actually an aggregation intersection for the ability of aggregating brand owners to operate within the WeChat ecosystem, and Search hopes to provide users with a global view of brand owners.
Further, on the user experience side, search will further reduce the user search threshold, when the user has search needs, can be "searchable at your fingertips", at the same time, search can also maximize the needs of users, and truly achieve "using WeChat, search all".
Enterprise WeChat: 140 million times of service generated every hour
Three years ago, Zhang Xiaolong said in the WeChat Open Class: "If the enterprise WeChat is only defined as a communication tool within the enterprise, its scene and significance will be very small, and only when it extends to the outside of the enterprise can it produce greater value." ”
Enterprise WeChat has always focused on creating "enterprise-exclusive connectors" and creating value with connections. After 3 years ago, the enterprise WeChat began to communicate with WeChat, and people are services. Now, more and more enterprises and organizations are using Enterprise WeChat: every hour, 1.15 million employees use Enterprise WeChat to serve users on WeChat, generating 140 million service processes.
At the 2022 WeChat Open Class PRO, Enterprise WeChat shared three stories about "connection".
Sophia, a whole-house custom home furnishing enterprise, has 7 factories across the country and more than 50,000 upstream and downstream employees. In order to achieve efficient collaboration between employees, Sofia uses enterprise WeChat, in the front end, Sofia uses the interconnection group, pulls its customers, designers and service commissioners in a group, any change in customer opinions can be synchronized in real time in the group; in the back end, the front-end drawings, dealers can upload to the enterprise WeChat system, the system can decompose this drawing into each version of the data, distributed to the back-end factory for production, the progress of production can also be queried in real time on the enterprise WeChat.
In addition, DJI Agriculture has set up a farmer training college with the help of enterprise WeChat to guide farmers to operate drones and solve agricultural plant protection problems; Hubei Yichang uses enterprise WeChat to help grid members serve the residents of the city, whether it is vaccination or old age certificate, a work hall does not have to run, the group can solve.
"It's not just about trust, it's about innovation, it's about innovation, it's about growth." Huang Tieming, vice president of Tencent's WeChat business group and head of enterprise WeChat, said. In the future, enterprise WeChat will continue to deepen its interoperability with WeChat, and continue to give merchants and enterprises better functions more conveniently and quickly.
Overall, compared with previous years, this year's WeChat open class PRO has shrunk in scale, and Zhang Xiaolong, the soul of WeChat, is also absent.
From the actual release situation, most of them are also reporting the results of 2021, and it is natural to think about it, after all, after 11 years of development, WeChat has become a national application, but because of this, it is impossible to change as drastically as the new APP. This year, the video number was the first to be released, the video number is also the most changed and updated part of WeChat in the past year, it is foreseeable that video will also be a key direction for the development of WeChat, but as for whether the video number can save Tencent's decline in the short video field for many years, it is still unknown.
On the other hand, whether it is the support of enterprise payment for small and micro enterprises, or the support of mini programs for anti-epidemic and government affairs, it also reflects the responsibility that WeChat should have as a national application, and our expectation for WeChat is not only that WeChat will become better, but that WeChat will make China better.