Author | Zheng Yue
Edit | Zheng Xuan
Recently, realizing that WeChat's circle of friends will be released for 10 years, Zhang Peng, founder of Geek Park, and Zhang Xiaolong, creator of WeChat, chatted on WeChat for a long time.
"It sounds like one of the things that Zhang Xiaolong feels most satisfied with about this feature is that it has been running stably for ten years once it was released, with almost no room for improvement." Zhang Peng concluded.
On April 19, 2012, The WeChat 4.0 version launched the Circle of Friends function. Today, in the upgrade log, you can also find the description of the time: "Have a beautiful photo album, record your life in the album, support sharing photos to the circle of friends, let all friends in the WeChat address book see, comment and like." 」
In the past ten years, the Internet has turned upside down, and WeChat has exceeded 1 billion monthly active users, becoming one of the infrastructures of the Chinese Internet world. The circle of friends has also become one of the most active functions in the WeChat system in addition to the basic function of communication.
Geek Park understands that at present, 780 million users enter the circle of friends every day, 120 million users publish the circle of friends, and more than 200 million users set the circle of friends for only three days. According to The 1.268 billion monthly active calculations released by WeChat, in every 10 people, 1 person will send at least one circle of friends every day, and 6 people will only watch and not send.
Ten years later, the circle of friends itself has indeed "not changed much". The experience of posting a circle of friends today, or brushing the circle of friends, is not fundamentally different from ten years ago. It can also be seen from the frequency of updates that there has been little change – in the past decade, there have been only 15 updates to the circle of friends in the WeChat post, the most recent staying in 2018.
But in the past decade, the circle of friends has also "changed" a lot. Ten years ago, we cared about a person's recent situation, is to call and boo cold to ask for warmth, and today many people's first choice is to turn over his/her circle of friends; ten years ago, we expressed concern about a public issue, is to pull a few friends Qingmei boiled wine, and today is to forward a circle of friends; even recently, an HR friend chatted with me, now understand the character of the candidate, add WeChat to flip through his circle of friends, has become the "basic exercise" of HR...
Today is the tenth birthday of the circle of friends, it is worth talking about the "change and change" of the circle of friends, and what Zhang Xiaolong and the WeChat team may think behind these details.
01 Unchanged circle of friends
In the eyes of Zhang Peng, the founder of Geek Park, who occasionally communicates privately with Zhang Xiaolong, the reason why the circle of friends can remain unchanged for ten years may be due to Zhang Xiaolong's goal setting for the function of the circle of friends, which is different from everyone's imagination, and because this goal has not changed in the past ten years, the product has not changed.
"I remember Zhang Xiaolong once said in a private chat that friends are the world we see. I was very impressed by this sentence. I've always felt that the starting point of the circle of friends may stem from this."
Zhang Peng feels that precisely because Zhang Xiaolong has such a unique understanding of users, in essence, the circle of friends is a tool that needs to at least "effectively socialize with friends", which users can't say, but it makes sense for everyone. And this is not from the purpose of user stickiness, duration, distribution ability and so on. This determines that there has been no major change in the circle of friends over the years, because the initial goal has been achieved, and the goal itself has not changed in ten years.
WeChat was originally an IM (instant messaging) tool, the circle of friends is launched in the year or so after the launch of WeChat, Zhang Xiaolong once said, his idea is very simple: in addition to the basic function of communication, WeChat needs a more social function, can achieve the function of interaction between friends.
Communication and communication are a kind of social needs of people, but there are very few people who can really send messages directly in a day, and even fewer can chat one-on-one. But people need to maintain more friends than they do directly every day, and 1-on-1 meetings don't meet all of people's social needs, which is why people go to offline parties and maintain relationships in a more efficient way.
The Internet is the same, communication can not meet all of people's online social needs, but also need another interactive scene, which is the reason for the success of QQ space. QQ space verified the existence of this interactive demand, and on its basis, WeChat went further and launched a more efficient product for maintaining social needs, that is, the circle of friends.
The English name of the circle of friends is "Moments", users share their status at a certain moment (the moment of the moment) for your friends to see and interact with. The design of this product is not complicated, similar to Twitter's timeline, but different. In Zhang Xiaolong's perspective, the circle of friends should be a timeline that shows personal highlight moments.
Pan Chao, the author of the science and technology review, once discussed the input box problem of Twitter with Zhang Xiaolong in depth. Historically, this input box has two definitions: what are you doing and what is happening, with the former being social and the latter being media-oriented. Pan Chao believes that the circle of friends is more social, but unlike Twitter, the foundation of this product is not "what are you doing", but "what do you see". That's why the icon for posting content in the circle of friends is a camera – take a picture of what you see immediately. In Zhang Xiaolong's concept of designing the circle of friends: the content you post represents your state at that moment.
The team work record at the birth of the circle of friends | WeChat pie
In the display of content, the circle of friends may refer to the timelines of Twitter and Facebook, and only display the information posted by friends in the circle of friends in chronological order. In fact, about five years ago, there was a discussion within the WeChat team about whether it should be an important ranking like Facebook, and it was also convenient to add ads.
But the idea is said to have been rejected by Zhang Xiaolong, and the most important reason is that it is impossible to distinguish which person is more important to the user. You may have just added a friend yesterday who is important to you, but there is no data about that person in the system; you can't evaluate how much you care about a person by how much you chat. You may not really care about the person who chats the most, and you may not really care about the person who chats less. Sorting by importance can cause the user to lose a lot of the relationship information that is important to him.
Only time is the fairest. Other social products such as public accounts, video numbers, Weibo, and Douyin will be ranked by the number of fans and positioning, but in the circle of friends, every friend is equal, and there is only one timeline. Users spend a lot of time brushing the circle of friends, not to see the most important content inside, but to see what these people do.
In addition to content and display methods, "friends" is the third feature of the circle of friends, which is also the biggest difference between this product and Facebook, Weibo, and Twitter.
The circle of friends has a pioneering feature: the visible range of any content is limited to two visible between friends. For example, in the comments section, you can see A and B replying in chat, but you must be friends with both A and B. This is actually a social mentality that takes into account the privacy of users when using the circle of friends.
The inspiration for this idea also comes from offline social networking, if there is no Internet, the real world is actually made up of friends we know, because our understanding of the world is what these friends tell you what it is, or friends read a book and then tell you what it is. A lot of information comes from a friend or a friend's recommendation.
Products such as Facebook and Renren allow users to see the interaction between friends of friends and their friends, which seems to expand the social chain, but in fact, it also destroys the privacy of social relationships, thereby reducing the desire of some users to interact. Many people may have had similar experiences in the PC era: in the case of everyone commenting on a friend's message, the result was seen and spread by many people who did not know, embarrassed to dare to send anything again; or visited the QQ space of a classmate of the opposite sex, and was seen by some unfamiliar people to coax.
Limiting the scope of the circle of friends to the friends who have been added, this protection of privacy seems to reduce the efficiency of content dissemination, but in fact, it allows more users to share with confidence, which reduces social pressure to a certain extent and stimulates the distribution of content. This is not the original intention of the circle of friends design, but sharing is a natural attribute in social occasions, people usually chat with friends, nothing more than to exchange information, and then convey it, so today's chain dissemination of content in the circle of friends, in the final analysis, is a natural result of the concept of product design.
The core of the circle of friends is to see what the friend is watching, but the user is looking at the friend, not the content sent by the friend, and whether the content sent by the friend is wonderful or not, in fact, it does not matter at all. The circle of friends is prominent in social, is the friend's avatar and name itself, rather than the content sent by friends, which is why many friends sent videos and links, users do not click into it directly like. This time is social, not liking the content.
It can be very certain that in Zhang Xiaolong's eyes, friends are the cornerstone of the circle of friends, and the content is not. This is also why Douyin has content, traffic, and friends, but the "friends" who brush Vibrato cannot find the feeling of brushing the circle of friends.
02 The change of the circle of friends
After talking about the unchanged circle of friends, let's talk about the change of the circle of friends.
Over the past decade, there have been two main changes in the circle of friends: one is the change in content medium, adding plain text and video; the other is the addition of a series of privacy-related restrictions. The former is to adapt to the development of the times to take the initiative to adjust, the latter is forced by the user to change.
Let's start with the change in the medium. The circle of friends can only post pictures and links at first, which is also the concept of Zhang Xiaolong's design of this product: share what you see in this instant.
The earliest version of the circle of friends can not just send text. Zhang Xiaolong believes that for the vast majority of people, it is easier for most people to write a point of view or describe a scene directly, bring a photo or forward a link, accompanied by a simple comment. So the first version didn't send text.
This is also in line with WeChat's consistent philosophy. As a product with billion-level users, WeChat's function has never met the needs of 5% or 1%, but is convenient for most ordinary people. However, after the release of the circle of friends, Zhang Xiaolong still felt that there were a small number of people who had the need to send texts, and their text organization ability was stronger, so they opened up this function.
But in order to avoid the impact of the new feature on users who do not send plain text, WeChat designed the function as an Easter egg: it needs to be long pressed on the camera button to appear. The logic behind this design is that since a small group of users are more capable, exploring a deeper entrance to publish is not an obstacle, and you can always find this entrance if you want to just send text. Although it was originally an Easter egg design pattern, it eventually became a regular function, and it transitioned naturally.
Another functional change is video, which is more important, but the logic behind it is simpler. Circle of Friends first in the 2014 WeChat 6.0 version of the update, began to support sharing videos, initially can only publish a six-second short video taken in WeChat, and then gradually let go of the duration, and allow sharing of local albums, video numbers and even videos from other platforms.
This update is mainly in line with the changes of the times. The video is also the content that users see at the moment, which is in line with the original design concept of the circle of friends. But in 2011, when WeChat first appeared, China was still in the era of 3G networks, and traffic limited the experience of video sharing. With the introduction of 4G in China in 2013 and the advent of the era of mobile Internet video, WeChat, as a basic social tool, has gradually unlocked video functions at various product levels.
In addition to the change of media, strengthening privacy protection is another clue to the change in the circle of friends in the past decade. The essence of this change is a long-term confrontation between the WeChat product operation team and the abuse of the circle of friends function.
The development of the circle of friends is accompanied by a highly valuable social currency. For example, the traffic value brought about by the content chain communication mentioned above, and the value judgment of individuals formed by the workplace and society based on the circle of friends. Like an unexplored treasure, more and more people use the circle of friends in other places: micro-business, games, app drainage, work circles, operating fake people and so on.
Circle of Friends is a social field, and these non-social features have brought disturbances to many users and brought great social pressure. In this regard, the vast majority of updates in the circle of friends in the past decade are giving users the right to refuse to disturb, that is, to reduce pressure on users.
Allow friends to view the range of your circle of friends
For example, the 2017 update of half a year visible, three days visible, today has more than 200 million users set to three days visible, accounting for 1/6 of the total number of WeChat users; such as the circle of friends launched six months after the optional range function; and even the protection of the circle of friends to WeChat other functions, such as when adding friends, you can directly choose whether to see / let see the circle of friends.
There is also the status of the recent WeChat update, which is hidden very deeply in WeChat, and can also be understood as a part of alleviating the social pressure in the circle of friends, because its purpose is to give users almost pure self-expression, a bit like self-talk, not necessarily the purpose of showing friends.
Zhang Xiaolong has a product idea, that is, do not attach multiple goals to a function. As mentioned earlier, the circle of friends now has a lot of changes that need to keep pace with the times, such as the state, such as dividing this person through the moment of adding WeChat, whether this person should let go of the circle of friends, so as to lift the strong correlation between the address book and the circle of friends, etc., all of which are added new functions outside the circle of friends to try to solve problems in the circle of friends.
In a sense, the confrontation with various problems brought about by the abuse of the circle of friends in the past decade is also the place where Zhang Xiaolong's products try to remain unchanged, but they must make a difference.
Many Internet people are great product managers and are professional in technology, but mostly amateur in sociology and psychology. So Facebook created something that made sense to the world, but gradually lost control of the product.
03 "Restraint" is the biggest misunderstanding of Zhang Xiaolong
Zhang Xiaolong gave a speech at the 2021 WeChat Open Class Pro| WeChat
When it comes to Zhang Xiaolong and the WeChat he created, there used to be an adjective: restraint.
But according to Geek Park, Zhang Xiaolong himself does not agree with this statement. In the WeChat open class in 2019, he once said publicly: Many people said that WeChat was very "restrained". But in fact, this is not the result of restraint, in essence, because WeChat has been following a good design principle, so that we will not do a lot of things that affect the beauty of design.
The essence of restraint is an emotional repression. Many people regard WeChat's caution in commercialization and the caution of functional design as the restraint of Zhang Xiaolong and WeChat, but in the view of friends like Zhang Peng and Pan Chao who have direct communication with Zhang Xiaolong: restraint is the appearance of the result, not the original intention of Zhang Xiaolong's pursuit, what he really pursues is reasonable.
The circle of friends is the product of this "rationality". As mentioned earlier, the original intention of the circle of friends is "friends are the world you see, you need to operate and maintain it", so WeChat creates a social scene that satisfies the interaction between users and friends. The reason why people outside the friendship relationship do not see the user's interaction with friends, the reason why the priority is not used to sort the circle of friends, a series of functions are designed to create a better interactive environment. As for making the content of the circle of friends break the "circle" and make it easier to commercialize, these are not considered problems when they conflict with reasonable product goals.
There is also a detail: the circle of friends like requires two layers of operation - first click on the two dots in the lower right corner, and then like. The essence of this design is to prevent accidental touch when sliding the circle of friends, increasing people's social pressure. Many products are pursuing the simplification of interaction, such as the one-button three-link of the B station, and a major feature of the QQ space is that it is easy to "slide" likes.
From the perspective of commercialization, Zhang Xiaolong is also very persistent about "rationality". For example, advertising is the only place in the process of brushing the circle of friends that uses algorithmic sorting. In everyone's circle of friends, the maximum number of ads that appear in a day is 5 times, and each time it will appear in the position of about the fourth article.
The commercialization of the circle of friends uses power very carefully and discreetly in this logic. Ads appeared a year after the circle of friends went online, and in 2015, the circle of friends joined the ad in the form of inserting a brand in the time order to send a circle of friends. Geek Park learned that today's circle of friends advertising can bring WeChat a hundred million yuan of revenue a day, but in terms of the hundreds of billions of advertising revenue of other platforms throughout the year, many people feel that they have not done a good job.
But is this not done well because it is not radical enough, and the ads are not released enough? Not strong enough in form? Or is it because of the problem with the user matching algorithm? Sources from inside WeChat said That Zhang Xiaolong believed more in the latter. In other words, he feels that the upper limit of 5 ads in a circle of friends a day is not a problem, and accurate and effective is the problem to be solved. In this way, we can reasonably solve the user's problems and solve our own problems.
The great power of WeChat comes from users, from the goals set by the function, and indeed meets the needs of users. Then this power does not belong only to WeChat, nor does it only belong to Tencent, but is a decentralized, everyone's right. Not pursuing the use of this centralized power to solve their own problems, but adhering to "rationality" thinking, may be an important reason why WeChat has not become bloated and "abominable" in the past decade.
Zhang Xiaolong once said, "In the past ten years, WeChat has added a lot of functions. Fortunately, WeChat is almost as simple as WeChat was ten years ago. Although it is very versatile than ten years ago, these functions are already the easiest way to use, so the increased complexity will be small. Simplicity is easy to use, especially when a product is used by a billion people."
"After ten years of walking, it is still the first sight", which should indeed be the most proud place for Zhang Xiaolong.
(Intern Ailin Zhou also contributed to this article)
*Header image source: Visual China
This article is the original article of Geek Park, please contact Geek Jun WeChat geekparkGO for reprint