Written by | Jiarong & Sakuragi
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Have you updated the WeChat status? The kind that can raise small animals?
Early this morning, the long-buried WeChat state once again entered people's field of vision under the hot search of #WeChat Farm. In just over half a day, the topic was read by 570 million, 70,000 discussions, and even brought fire to #Why is WeChat Farm so hot#, #Raise SpongeBob squarepants and other related topics.
For a time, there was a phenomenon of "human-to-human transmission" on WeChat farms. Imaginative netizens are not satisfied with raising chickens, ducks and fish, these "ordinary people", some people fly white pigeons in the forest, some people raise national treasures in the bamboo forest, and some people raise SpongeBob in front of the pineapple house, only WeChat can't think of no users can't do it. A number of users responded to the "new entropy", and after the game became popular, the number of friends who updated the WeChat status visibly increased.
In fact, this is not a new feature of WeChat online, but a new way of playing weChat status - animal emoji + farm background map, essentially changing soup without changing medicine. Some people have a lot of fun, and some people scoff at the tedious steps and chicken ribs.
But in any case, this does make the WeChat status catch fire again. For the platform, it has previously been emphasizing the new action of WeChat status on the official public account "WeChat Pie", but unfortunately there has been little splash.
Different from before, the popularity of weChat farms this time seems to be hindsight. When other social platforms "WeChat Farm Raiders" were not uncommon, WeChat Pie slowly issued an official announcement article entitled "WeChat Farm Has Opened", which was published less than four hours ago and then deleted.
The last time WeChat was on fire was at the beginning of the launch, the major platforms were full of shared copy and background, but unfortunately, after that, they opened high and went low. How hot it was at the beginning, how cold and silent it was in the back. Is this popularity unintentionally planted willows, or is it man-made? The answer is no longer important, but it is foreseeable that it is difficult to restore the decline of WeChat's state if you only rely on new bottles of old wine. How to truly achieve the expectations given to the "status" section, WeChat still has some way to go.
01 WeChat Q? It's not that simple
Since the launch of The 8.0 version of WeChat, it has been accompanied by the question of "QQ", and the popularity of the WeChat farm game is even more suspected of moving closer to the QQ farm. However, if it is said that imitating QQ is the goal of WeChat, I am afraid it is not so simple, and the value of WeChat status is not only an upgraded version of "QQ signature", but also the link dream of Tencent behind it.
At first, Zhang Xiaolong's definition of WeChat status was a "living business card" containing the current state: "If you are in a certain state, you also want to see who is in the same state as you, such as playing the same game and in the same café." What is the essence of social interaction is to find the same kind, and "state" is the way to find the same kind. ”
Although the WeChat status and QQ status seem similar on the surface, even QQ has dozens of states to choose from, and WeChat "loses at the starting line" in the number of optional states. But how can you find the same kind of "play the same game, play in the same café"? WeChat status has launched background selection, positioning functions and privacy settings for this purpose, and can interact with each other with friends.
Although it is better than QQ in terms of scalability, it still has not made any big moves. Relying on the huge number of users, after the first highlight, it did not cause any sustained repercussions. The reason is inseparable from the sense of experience of WeChat status.
Different from the QQ status, WeChat has set a 24-hour validity period for the status function, and the expired user needs to reset it. This is reminiscent of the 24-hour "story" feature of Instagram, which is also a social platform. From the perspective of the basic specific form alone, the two are very similar. All come with support images, videos, positioning, threads, etc.
In terms of sociality alone, there is an objective gap between WeChat status and Instagram's story. On the one hand, on the plate entrance, Instagram places the entrance of "stroy" directly at the top of the dynamic page, which is not only convenient for users to upload content, but also intuitively sees the story of friends, and the high reach is obvious. In contrast, the entrance to the WeChat state is somewhat hidden.
Deep-depth user Peng Hui told "New Entropy": "Although the WeChat status has been online for a long time, many young people around me do not play this function very much, and some even do not know, let alone the elders." ”
In terms of sharing and use, although they are all 24-hour validity periods, Ins can publish multiple stories, while WeChat status only supports one status at a time, if you want to release a new status, either manually end the current state, re-release, or wait for the current state to expire. Either option is more complex to use than Ins.
Peng Hui told "New Entropy" that she has more than 1,000 WeChat friends, and after the WeChat farm was on fire, only a few dozen friends played weChat status, and even fewer had previously set the status.
With the development of WeChat's status, its ambitions have long been limited to the identity of "living business cards". In terms of background selection, previously WeChat status can only choose to upload pictures and videos locally, and then you can upload the content of the video number as the status background. The link with the video number is so obvious that the outside world seems to be that what WeChat status wants to do is the video number version of the circle of friends.
The video number itself in the development period wants to rely on the unpopular function to drain the flow, which is undoubtedly more difficult. Therefore, in the second half of last year, WeChat opened up the link point between WeChat status and Tencent's other ecosystems.
In May last year, WeChat status supported QQ music one-click sharing. After selecting a favorite song on QQ Music, click "Share" to directly set it to a state, and friends can play music by pulling down in the status.
In September, the WeChat status was linked to the national K song, and the process was exactly the same as the sharing of QQ music. However, the effect of sharing is only the user's song in the national K song, and does not realize the function of "K song" in the state.
In WeChat's view, these functions can help users achieve "your mood, WeChat friends can directly listen". In essence, sharing QQ music and national K songs to WeChat status is no different from sharing the link directly to the circle of friends.
Zhang Xiaolong once revealed that 780 million people on WeChat entered the circle of friends, and 120 million people sent a circle of friends. Compared with the activity of the circle of friends, the WeChat status can be described as less frequent. From the user's point of view, if you really want more friends to understand their "mood" through the music they share, the number of people who share it to the circle of friends is more or the number of people who share it to WeChat status is more? The results are predictable.
In addition, WeChat and Starbucks have also joined forces to launch the "Starbucks Status", linking online and offline. Scan the Starbucks WeChat exclusive QR code in the Starbucks store, users can get the exclusive WeChat status of Starbucks, and click the Starbucks icon next to the status after sharing to jump to the official program to purchase. There is no doubt that the access to Starbucks Mini Programs is just the beginning, behind which is the ambition of WeChat Status Link Social and Mini Programs.
Unlike the "unofficial" popularity of WeChat farms, these links are personally announced by the WeChat official, which is not high-profile, but unfortunately, the opening of these entrances still failed to arouse the enthusiasm of users.
As a national social software with huge social traffic, If WeChat wants to take on Tencent's ecological dream, it cannot have only one connection point. Behind the "WeChat state" may be the extension of social value to link value, although at present, there is still a distance from the real realization of this value.
02 Can you get past the QQ show?
"Why is WeChat Farm so hot?" This is the second topic that rushed to Weibo today. Obviously, people are full of curiosity and confusion about the WeChat farm that has accidentally become popular. Looking back at the history of Tencent's development, the scene of this moment seems to have experienced the same experience as the accidental explosion of the QQ show in 2003.
At that time, The fledgling Tencent product manager Xu Liang, after hearing by chance that the Korean website Sayclub.com developed a virtual product, came to the inspiration and put forward the original idea of qq show. At that time, Zhang Zhidong, who was in charge of the product, only said one sentence after listening to the report, "I think this is a good product and should be done immediately."
A few months later, the QQ show was launched, and the popularity surprised everyone. In the first six months of the launch, 5 million people purchased the service, which became almost one of Tencent's most important sources of income at that time.
Wu Xiaobo once said in "Tencent Biography", "In the history of Tencent, and even in the history of China's Internet, QQ Show can be called a revolutionary charging product, which can be regarded as an 'oriental application innovation' in the global Internet industry." Many Internet researchers in the West are very surprised that Chinese netizens are willing to spend money on virtual props to decorate themselves. ”
Since then, the research and development and creation of avatars, props, and skins seems to have become the unchanged theme of the Chinese Internet for more than a decade. Its application areas range from social applications to games to e-commerce platforms, from the king glory skin that continuously creates a large amount of revenue, to the gel App that unexpectedly became popular last year, and has never stopped.
What is the force behind the huge demand that is fueling the development of virtual products?
Sociological explanations can be seen from Wu Xiaobo's discourse: Chinese society has always been a hierarchical society full of a sense of repression, which is manifested both within the clan and at the level of public society, where people tremble in real life, and their emotional lives are very pale and boring. The emergence of virtual communities, like a new world that suddenly appears, allows people who have been depressed for a long time to wear masks and achieve a carnival that does not need moderation.
From the perspective of Tencent internally, it seems to agree with this view. In an interview with reporters, Wu Xiaoguang, senior executive vice president of Tencent, said that what Tencent sells is not actually "clothing", but "emotional sustenance", "representing the image of a person in the eyes of others, friends see my image on QQ, you can know what kind of person I am."
On the other hand, from the perspective of products, in terms of social networking, the current circle of friends has too many functions in the WeChat system: personal display, e-commerce private domain, video number exposure, advertising publicity and so on. Under the multi-function, the square attribute of the circle of friends will be continuously strengthened, which also means that the personal expression of WeChat users is also constantly being compressed.
Zhang Xiaolong once said in the WeChat class: Everyone publishes the circle of friends mainly to promote the design, and everyone shows the most beautiful side in it to get the recognition of others; what we see in the circle of friends is often the best state, and then all the bad states are blocked. For such a high-pressure social tool as the circle of friends, it may not represent future trends. In the future, everyone needs a more relaxed way. WeChat should do another social model outside the circle of friends to solve the drawbacks mentioned above.
From the perspective of actual operation, if the WeChat state is a social way based on virtual images in the future, that is, it breaks the sense of seriousness from the beginning. Looking at the content settings of the WeChat status specifically, the emotions of non-perfect people in the circle of friends such as "tired", "emo" and "cracked", and the rough image of the small animals shown by the WeChat farm this time, it seems to show the determination that the WeChat state will be different from the circle of friends.
When he launched the QQ show in 2003, Ma Huateng bought the following props in the mall: a long hair, a pair of sunglasses, and a pair of tight jeans, which is a symbolic dress, which is the opposite of Boss Ma's life. QQ show is the inner reflection of people in that era, can today's WeChat status replicate the success of that time?
(Peng Hui is a pseudonym in the text)